The 5 Challenges Of Warehouse Management

To stay in the race, industrial companies are transforming. The warehouse management, mobilized at both ends of the supply chain, is of course at the forefront in the company’s transformation effort.

However, behind the mission perceived by all to secure logistics excellence, warehouse management is a complex function. Indeed, its teams are confronted with contradictory injunctions, having to combine urgency and excellence of the execution, customer satisfaction, and profitability of the processes or even safety and lack of space.

This is why the digitization of its processes is a major issue for warehouse management. An advanced Warehouse Management solution is an asset to help warehouse management meet its five major challenges:

• Customer satisfaction and innovation
• Process efficiency
• Transversality
• Safety of goods and people
• The dynamics of the supplier ecosystem

Warehouse management: maximizing customer satisfaction and contributing to innovation

Exact deliveries

Companies are judged on their ability to guarantee their BtoC or BtoB clients the fundamentals of a positive experience:

• Compliance with the announced availability deadlines
• Respect for the quality and quantity sold
• The ability to process returns simply

The heart of the warehouse management’s mission is to progress on this dimension, even though the company’s customers tend to continuously raise their expectations.

The invention of new services

Innovation is at the center of companies’ differentiation strategy. The launch of new products or new services naturally has repercussions in the organization of the warehouse.

It may be necessary to consider different storage constraints, renewed order preparation procedures, or integrate a new generation of automated equipment.

In all cases, warehouse management will have to change its operation. Is your Warehouse Management solution capable of supporting you in your transformation?

⇒ what added value for a latest generation CMMS solution?

• Parcel traceability by bar codes or RFID chips
• Management of customer returns
• Automated data exchange with sales management
• Agile configuration: rapid deployment and settings within the reach of operators
• Warehouse management: optimizing perimeter processes

Team functioning and information flow

To accomplish his task as efficiently as possible, it is important for each operator to have precise and useful information near his workstation. Knowing that real-time is decisive to apply any order modification without delay. The mobility of your warehouse management solution is clearly an asset.

The pedagogy of the screens and the readability of the indicators of your CMMS solution also play a big role in integrating the best conditions operators who discover your organization, new hires, or temporary workers.

Interoperability with the factory of the future

The principle of Industry 4.0 encompasses the entire supply chain. This is why the latest generations of warehouse equipment are integrating more and more advanced functions.

Your warehouse management solution must be open enough to be able to interoperate with this innovative and communicating equipment. Its operation in the Cloud will obviously facilitate this interoperability.

Control of the function

Warehouse management is in charge of executing part of the processes of the purchasing cycle and the sales cycle. As in every function of the company, logistics are required to contribute to improving the overall efficiency of the organization.

The first function of the CMMS solution is precisely to accelerate the execution of logistics tasks and to centralize the data allowing an overall fluidity of the processes.

⇒ What added value for a latest generation CMMS solution?

• Visual indicators understandable by all operators
• Compatibility with the use of digital logistics equipment
• Optimization of storage spaces and distribution of packages between trucks
• Integration of the regulatory requirements of each country of destination of the products
• Automation of report production
• Warehouse management: improve information sharing with upstream functions

Sharing stock information

The ability of store teams to know and share in real-time the state of finished product stocks for each line is essential in order to be able to speed up or, on the contrary, delay production launches.

All the more so in a perspective of a globalized supply chain, where stocks are distributed between several sites.

Sharing financial information

Accelerating the processing of the buying cycle and the sales cycle are recognized levers for companies’ competitiveness. The ability of warehouse teams to provide information to the information system in real-time about entries and exits contributes to the overall excellence of the organization.

⇒ What added value for a latest generation CMMS solution?

• Easy integration into the company’s overall information system
• Automation of report production
• Cross-function indicators and notifications
• Warehouse management: protect operators and guarantee the integrity of stocks and equipment

The rapid movements of lifting and transport equipment, large rack heights or the weight of the items to be stored can endanger the physical integrity of warehouse operators. Warehouse management protects actors:

By fixing the machine of the authorized use by machine: by whom? To do what?

By optimizing handling (locations, flow) to prevent MSDs¹

The stored items can be perishable (agrifood), fragile or dangerous (chemicals). Careful management of locations, storage conditions and exit procedures (FIFO) guarantees that stocks are taken care of under the best possible conditions of rationality and safety.

⇒ What added value for a latest generation CMMS solution?

Centralized management of the assignments of each intra-warehouse transport and lifting machine (restrictions in relation to certain jobs or certain user profiles)

Management of locations and automation of rotation management

Warehouse management: contributing to purchasing excellence

The company’s supplier partners play a key role in maximizing customer satisfaction. For example, they can provide product innovation and contribute to service excellence through action taken on the part of the value chain that is their responsibility.

In addition, the concept of extended enterprise aims to mobilize the ecosystem of the company as a whole to optimize the supply chain. In particular by distributing production and stocks so as to maximize the added value of each actor.

⇒ What added value for a latest generation CMMS solution?

• Multi-company, multi-site solution
• Management of an extended and mobile information system thanks to the Cloud

In conclusion, the complexity of the task of warehouse management teams is to have to manage both:

Physical objects and information

Stocks and flows

Warehouse management must, therefore, master many parameters to optimize customer satisfaction and improve the profitability of your activity. Only the latest generation warehouse management software meets the conditions to accompany you serenely in your progress.

To choose a simple, powerful and scalable CMMS App solution, learn about the strengths of Ecodocs.