Warehouse Management

Another day and another new development on the Oracle WMS front. Oracle just announced the general availability of two advanced features in Oracle WMS:

This release provides customers the flexibility to deploy Oracle Warehouse Management as a distributed solution. Now, customers can take advantage of the latest industry-leading warehouse management capabilities from Oracle without upgrading to the latest version of the Oracle E-Business Suite.

"Oracle has always been committed to delivering best-in-class warehouse management capabilities through Oracle Warehouse Management," said Jon Chorley, Oracle Vice President, Supply Chain Product Strategy. "This expanded functionality combined with more integrated logistics capabilities and a new distributed deployment option is further proof of this commitment."

"Ensuring that today's complex and increasingly global supply chains run efficiently and smoothly demands effective warehouse management," said Dwight Klappich, Gartner Research Vice President. "The high velocity demands of today's supply chain require solutions that are always-on and always connected, regardless of network model, ERP or application infrastructure."

The additional features will be delivered as a patch on R12.1:

1. Distributed WMS Deployment
2. Advanced Wave Planning

WMS Deployment Flexibility

Until now Oracle E-Business Suite (EBS) Warehouse Management System (WMS) required the transaction source systems like Purchasing and Order Management and execution systems like WMS reside and operate within the same instance. With the release of Distributed WMS feature, Oracle WMS can be deployed on a separate physical instance that is distinct from E-Business Suite (EBS) instance. This feature gives powerful choices to customers to deploy WMS either as an "integrated" as a module within EBS or as a "distributed" and independent solution installed on a separate instance. More specifically:

1. Customers who want the latest WMS features in R12.1 can have WMS deployed on a separate instance without upgrade of the entire application suite.

2. Oracle WMS can be deployed along with a EBS or non-EBS host system

3. Warehouse with network connectivity issues can have their independent WMS instance for an "always on" WMS solution

The feature also ships with an integration framework based on Oracle Data Integration (ODI) tool. More information on this release and useful whitepapers can be found using the following Metalink Note:

Distributed Warehouse Management System (Note: 821294.1)

One thing to be noted, is that Distributed WMS is not a separate product and all features developed in WMS (now or in future) will be available irrespective of the choice of deployment.

Optimize Warehouse Execution using Advanced Wave Planning

Another equally important milestone for us is the release of advanced wave planning. Until now the pick waves generated from pick release functionality lacked the planning aspects of fulfillment i.e. preview of lines and tasks, expected completion, fill rate and labor needs. Advanced wave planning gives planning capabilities and much more. Also included is a single Wave Dashboard that allows a warehouse manager to view wave status and drill down to detailed line or task status. The exception engine can be configured for specific business case to proactively look for exceptions such that corrective action can be taken. For example, a severe exception can be triggered if 80% of the lines in a wave are not loaded to the trailer 30 minutes prior to dock appointment end time.

We will follow-up with more detailed postings on these and other 12.1 features. As always stay tuned. These are exciting times to be in WMS world!