Warehouse Management

Modern Material Handling's latest issue has an excellent article on WMS Selection (Hat Tip to Bill Reilly for forwarding the link). The seven questions covered by Bob Trebilcock in this article is a good starting point and should provide a lot of clarity to anyone in the market for WMS. From an Oracle WMS perspective the very first question is the most relevant:

Can you get WMS functionality from your ERP system? If you have Oracle Applications installed, can you prove that Oracle WMS won't meet your needs?

What this means is that if you are an Oracle Application customer, you need to have a pretty good reason why Oracle WMS should not be chosen for your warehouse needs. You need to consider the savings from an integrated WMS like Oracle vs the incremental benefits from a 3rd party WMS. How can that be done? WMS Solution Factory has all the tools!

Take a look at the Integrated WMS value calculator at the WMS solution Factory. Essentially you need to compare the savings from an integrated business like Oracle WMS vs the incremental operational benefits from a bolt-on WMS (if at all they do exist). You can use the WMS value calculator at the WMS solution factory to see if the additional benefits are justified.

Besides the 7 questions, the following points are also important:

What are you doing now? What are you doing about your current WMS needs? This is important if you want to reuse your existing IT assets and want to limit the learning curve. If your current WMS needs are causing operational issues, the time available to select a WMS is fairly limited.

Where do you want to go? You need to have a clear idea about your motivation for a new WMS. An important aspect of WMS selection is to identify the long term goals and objective behind new WMS implementation. A WMS implementation is capital intensive and once deployed not easy to switch. Questions to be asked: How is the future growth impact warehouse operations? Is the WMS vendor financially viable? Is the WMS vendor  capable to support your WMS needs for the long term?

How do you want to get there? If the number of WMS vendors seem bewildering, here is a suggestion: While a WMS is important, operational success in your warehouse and WMS deployment has less to do with the software and more to do with how its managed. A clear plan for success is important. I have blogged about it in the past at here and here. Do it and you will be fine.