Commonwealth recently surveyed three mid-tier WMS providers - two of which offer SaaS WMS systems and one of which offers a traditional licensed WMS. (The SaaS model allows companies to avoid an upfront licensing fee and simply pay a monthly usage fee for the software.) We asked them about thirty  specific functionality points to see if these were now offered as standard functionality, and - perhaps more importantly - whether they have customers actually using these features and breaking them in.

Our research showed that a number of features which were previously unavailable in mid-tier WMS are now solidly within these providers' offerings. Some of this functionality includes the ability to cluster pick, the ability to slot the same SKU in multiple locations in the same zone, advanced lot control and serialization, country-of-origin tracking, advanced replenishment capabilities, and cartonization. There were a few features that are still not well developed by mid-tier WMS providers such as the ability to perform clustered put-away, task interleaving, and some areas of movable unit tracking.

Our key take-away is that companies are properly advised to consider providers from a mix of functionality tiers in their WMS selection projects. The relatively large number of providers and lack of consolidation in the vendor community in the last five years gives companies a wide selection of choices that they should take full advantage of.

Source: Commonwealth Supply Chain Advisors


Keywords: warehouse management, warehouse management systems, wms warehouse management