FOCUS
THE NEW EPOCH OF
WAREHOUSE
SOFTWARE
Warehouses of tomorrow need to be highly process driven rather than people driven. Unlike what used to apply two decades back, industries have transformed and what warehouses must do now has changed. This has radically altered the vision of what warehouse software must do. Steve Mulaik, Director, Crimson & Co, through this very informative analysis highlights the new alternatives and how they can be used to up a firm's profitability quotient.
A
s a company grows, so must its warehouse. As a warehouse expands and the activity inside increases, the efficiency envelope of the operation depends less on proper management and more on the software used to operate the site. This is not to propose that bad management cannot wreck a warehouse; it can, but it has been proven time and again that the warehouses that perform better than
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average have better software than average. This may be even more true today than it was 20 years ago. This is an important point for logistics executives because for the first time in my 30 years’ career helping companies select & install warehouse software, there are some new choices. I don’t mean there are new WMS packages or vendors. I mean there are new types of warehouse software beyond the classic WMS
package that companies typically install. I use this term ‘new type’ because this software is architected quite differently and it provides additional benefits that the classical WMS products will be hardpressed to duplicate. Is this hype? I don’t think so. What we are seeing in the marketplace is the established players of the classic WMS products slowly losing market share in arenas they used to win regularly.