Similar to the multiple steps that are crucial when constructing a house, warehouse management is of utmost importance in supply chain operations. In the process of carefully weaving the strands of the supply chain from one end to another, warehouse management acts as an intermediate hub, making organising, tracking and distribution more efficient and smoother. While the role of warehouse management sounds quite simple and straightforward, underlying this process is a multitude of challenges to overcome.
Maintaining inventory accuracy, properly designing facility layout, flawless order fulfilment and quality control are some examples of the challenges often faced by warehouse managers in this intricate process. This is where Simplr Solutions comes into play to streamline operations with warehouse management systems (WMS). With the aim of clearing the air about WMS and how it effortlessly resolves the top challenges faced in inventory management, this article dives into all the essentials you need to know from the obstacles, strategies to overcome and benefits of WMS in supply chain management.
Overview of Warehouse Management
Have you ever organised a party by yourself? If you have, you know the amount of planning and organisational skills that go into making it a success on time. First, you will have to make a list of the things you need, order them, or shop for them. Then, you will have to store everything methodically so it is easy to access the party as the date gets near. Food and drink will be stored in the fridge, and decorations will be placed in the dining room, and so on.
At the party, you will retrieve what you need to serve and entertain your guests from the storage places. Decorations will be moved to all the corners and table tops. You will also have to keep an eye out for what is running low and get them replaced, like refilling drinks and going out to get more ice cubes. Managing a warehouse in logistics is like this, too. Through a process of overseeing different steps like receiving, storing, kicking, tracking, packing, and shipping inventory, warehouse management ensures that logistics efficiency is maintained. The precision of this process determines the accuracy, effectiveness, and pace of the supply chain and modern warehouses, with technology playing a huge role.
Top Challenges in Warehouse Management
Inventory Inaccuracy
Imagine you ordered 80 Dubai chocolate bars as party favours for your guests. However, due to a miscount, you think you have received 90 bars and invited some more people. Now, because your inventory details are inaccurate, it will affect your guests and your image as a party host. These types of errors can happen in warehouses as well when the recorded product details contradict what is actually in stock.
This can result in underestimation or overestimation of product availability, disappointed customers, financial losses and wanted resources attempting to undo the errors. Regardless of what caused it, inventory inaccuracy can be a logistic nightmare if not handled properly.
Inefficient Picking and Packing Processes
A warehouse is a large space containing numerous goods. If it is poorly organised and uses outdated methods, picking the products for orders and packing them in time will be an uphill battle. For example, if an employee has to walk a long distance to collect different items of an order as they are stored in separate sections far apart, it would be inefficient. Sometimes, boxes that are too large or too small will be used to pack order items, which wastes resources and risks damage to the products during shipping. This can result in package returns, refunds, shipping issues and wasted time.
Labor Management Issues
Let’s go back to the party example for this one. What would happen if you don’t have enough servers to offer refreshments when the guests arrive or if you put the task of decorating on a person with zero artistic skills? It probably would turn out to be a less-than-desirable situation, right? Similarly, in a warehouse, the labour should be managed appropriately to avoid understaffing, poor task allocation, employee demotivation and low productivity. This challenge can reflect on other parts of warehouse management, as poor labour management can cause disruption and delays in the supply chain process.
Space Utilisation Problems
Optimal spatial organisation is crucial in warehouse management to make sure that all items can be stored in an effective manner that utilises the space of the warehouse wisely. In order to do this, different spaces of the warehouse have to be identified to best fit various products for safe and smart storage that is also easy to retrieve when an order comes in. When the warehouse space is not used efficiently, it can cause clutter to pile up, delays in picking and packing and disturbances to the entire process. Considering the layout of the warehouse is important to tackle this challenge.
Lack of Data-Driven Insights
Warehouse management is not purely tangible inventory management. It also needs data analytical aspects to understand the demands precisely, supply orders efficiently, and keep customers happy. When this is absent from the process, essential needs, such as identifying bottlenecks in the management and predicting product demands, go unfulfilled. Just like vaguely guessing how many appetisers you need for your party guests won’t go well, rough estimations and going with the flow to make decisions in warehouse management will only damper the final outcomes. This can not only increase operational costs and overconsumption of energy but also result in insufficient stock in warehouse management.
How a Warehouse Management System (WMS) Solves These Challenges
Real-Time Inventory Tracking
Warehouse management System facilitates tracking all the inventory in real-time effortlessly to avoid any mishaps and reduce inventory inaccuracies in warehouse management. It offers and maintains transparency in inventory and order tracking through barcodes or Radio frequency identification so that the details about items will be accurately recorded. As it is done in real time, the trends of receiving, picking, storing, packing, and shipping can be understood as well. This solves problems of overestimation or underestimation of products in stock and prevents potentially disappointing your customers.
Automated Picking and Packing
WMS clears out obstacles often faced by employees and warehouse managers when it comes to picking and packing orders. It can be used to evaluate and choose the most efficient path to collect different items for an order with the least amount of time and labour possible. As a result, employees can spend less time and energy on manual, tedious tasks and focus on optimising their productivity at the warehouse. Bar code scanners and handheld devices can increase efficiency in the work process, such as picking up and verifying order items and packing appropriately to ship to customers.
Optimised Labor Allocation
To avoid labour management issues, the appropriate allocation of tasks according to the real-time requirements at the warehouse and the capabilities of the employees will be done by WMS. This can immediately increase productivity and promote smooth flow in warehouse management, optimising this step in the supply chain. When the tasks are allocated appropriately, they can not only boost efficiency but also motivate employees as they create an uplifting work environment. This mitigates issues of misallocation and wasting resources on particular tasks.
Space Optimisation
With WMS, there is no room for insufficient use of storage space in warehouse management. It can be used to evaluate the whole layout of the warehouse and identify which type of products can be stored in specific ways in different parts of the warehouse for easier operations. With the recorded data, recommendations can be made for adjustments in the layout for better storage and picking items for orders. This results in maximising storage capacity in the warehouse with the use of advanced organisational tools to spike the effectiveness of inventory management.
Benefits of Implementing a WMS in Warehouse Management
The great nature of WMS is not just its ability to swiftly swipe away challenges like inventory inaccuracy, poor labour management, disruptions in packing and lack of data-driven operations; it also facilitates warehouse management in a positive manner by bringing forth a number of added benefits to a supply chain logistics. Here are some of them.
- Enhanced capacity for cost-efficient operations.
- Increasing the productivity flow in tasks.
- Automation of important details for tracking
- Reduced waste of human, time and other resources.
- Opportunities for scalability and flexibility for future growth
Explore Simplr’s WMS solutions to optimise your warehouse management,
In the ever-evolving world of supply chain management, warehouses play a critical role in offering an optimisation hub for inventory. In warehouse management, employees and managers face numerous challenges that can potentially hinder operations from running smoothly. It could be anything from inaccuracies in inventory, inefficient picking and packing, poor labour management issues, difficulties in utilising the storage spaces and lack of data-driven insights to drive the process.
With warehouse management systems, these challenges can be solved by real-time tracking, automated picking, optimised labour allocation, and space optimisation, along with a list of advantages that reduce waste, costs and resources. As the competitiveness in the market grows constantly, it is important to utilise technology this way and implement WMS in your warehouse management to revamp the process. Make this your call to partner with us and take the extra step to get ahead.
