Warehouse Management System

In a WMS, we aim to observe the maximized profits with a minimized cost with certain computerized procedures to enable a seamless process of warehouse operation. With the above consideration, we come up with 4 main special features that are essential to be equipped in the WMS. First of all, we need to have barcode labeling for all the stocks in the warehouse in order to identify each product, keep record in the system and find them out easily.It is necessary for us to have detailed information of every stock in the warehouse by simply identifying the barcode labels with wireless inventory scanner, which could save time, reduce paper work and greatly increase the productivity and accuracy when handling stocks. Barcode labeling is fundamental for WMS as we need to keep tracking the stocks throughout the whole warehouse operation process. Secondly, we think that efficiency is also an undeniable element in WMS, which we consider auto-conveyer as one of our choice of special features to e nhance the efficiency.Auto-conveyor could reduce the need of man power and it is much speedy than the manually controlled way when moving stocks as it could quickly retrieve wanted items. Auto conveyor could also handle some simple sorting and identification work, which greatly reduce the need of manpower. Thirdly, virtual warehouse would be our core feature in the WMS, it acts as an important role in both order management and put away and packing. It provides a comprehensive physical view of the warehouse. With a virtual warehouse, we could have a clear idea of the operating warehouse through the browser.It could facilitate the decision making in the WMS as we could control a lot of process with a virtual warehouse. Indeed, a virtual warehouse is a system that involved a lot of components, but we are now focusing on the order management and the put away and picking management. With WMS, orders could be generated easily on the internet as the information of customers, suppliers and the stocks are kept in the system. It is convenient to add items, notes and select the customer or supplier for your purchase or sales order.This may improve the efficiency and is environmentally friendly when compared with the paper file. It is much less time-consuming to find out the order and customer information. For the put away management, the WMS could utilize the optimum locations for the stocks received in the warehouse automatically. Also in the picking management, the WMS could decide the best location for picking. With this system, we do not have to waste time on finding storage location, while having a greater control in the allocation of resources and facilitates time management.In fact, the virtual warehouse could not work alone, while barcode labeling and auto-conveyor assisted the virtual warehouse a lot in the stance of automation and computerization. They three are interrelated and the virtual warehouse is in the leading position among them, which means it is impo rtant in connecting different parts of a warehouse and make the WMS works. Although the above 3 special features has provide us convenience, efficiency and accuracy, we could not fully rely on a computerized system but to have a feature that could reduce our mistakes to the minimum, ideally, zero mistake.Thus the last feature we include in our WMS is cycle counting. Cycle counting reduces the need for the time-consuming and costly process of shutting down the manufacturing process in order to count inventory, which the inventory auditing procedure is carried out according to a continuous schedule. The result would be a more accurate calculation of stocks in the warehouse. To conclude, we think these four features are able to make a WMS that could control material movement efficiently and most possibly making the maximum profit.