• Advertise
  • Contact Us
  • About Us
  • Supplier Directory
  • SCB YouTube
  • Login
  • Subscribe
  • Logout
  • My Profile
  • LOGISTICS
    • Air Cargo
    • All Logistics
    • Express/Small Shipments
    • Facility Location Planning
    • Freight Forwarding/Customs Brokerage
    • Global Gateways
    • Global Logistics
    • Last Mile Delivery
    • Logistics Outsourcing
    • LTL/Truckload Services
    • Ocean Transportation
    • Rail & Intermodal
    • Reverse Logistics
    • Service Parts Management
    • Transportation & Distribution
  • TECHNOLOGY
    • All Technology
    • Artificial Intelligence
    • Cloud & On-Demand Systems
    • Data Management (Big Data/IoT/Blockchain)
    • ERP & Enterprise Systems
    • Forecasting & Demand Planning
    • Global Trade Management
    • Inventory Planning/ Optimization
    • Product Lifecycle Management
    • Sales & Operations Planning
    • SC Finance & Revenue Management
    • SC Planning & Optimization
    • Sourcing/Procurement/SRM
    • Supply Chain Visibility
    • Transportation Management
  • GENERAL SCM
    • Business Strategy Alignment
    • Education & Professional Development
    • Global Supply Chain Management
    • Global Trade & Economics
    • HR & Labor Management
    • Quality & Metrics
    • Regulation & Compliance
    • SC Security & Risk Mgmt
    • Supply Chains in Crisis
    • Sustainability & Corporate Social Responsibility
  • WAREHOUSING
    • All Warehouse Services
    • Conveyors & Sortation
    • Lift Trucks & AGVs
    • Order Fulfillment
    • Packaging
    • RFID, Barcode, Mobility & Voice
    • Robotics
    • Warehouse Management Systems
  • INDUSTRIES
    • Aerospace & Defense
    • Apparel
    • Automotive
    • Chemicals & Energy
    • Consumer Packaged Goods
    • E-Commerce/Omni-Channel
    • Food & Beverage
    • Healthcare
    • High-Tech/Electronics
    • Industrial Manufacturing
    • Pharmaceutical/Biotech
    • Retail
  • THINK TANK
  • WEBINARS
    • On-Demand Webinars
    • Upcoming Webinars
    • Webinar Library
  • PODCASTS
  • VIDEOS
  • WHITEPAPERS
Home » Real-Time Warehouse Orchestration Improves Order-Fulfillment Times

Real-Time Warehouse Orchestration Improves Order-Fulfillment Times

February 8, 2022
Keith Moore, SupplyChainBrain Contributor
The warehouse management system (WMS) market is mature, but these applications need added functionality to keep up with growing customer demand, transportation capacity issues and labor shortages. Current WMS software is insufficient for optimizing processes, such as balancing inventory, labor and space, that will lead to meeting customer requirements for on-time, in-full deliveries. Warehouse resource planning and scheduling needs to be used with the WMS to optimize and orchestrate activities within warehouse operations.

Warehousing has lagged other business areas in adopting advanced decision support capabilities, but this is no longer acceptable or sustainable. Warehouses now need more sophisticated tools to deal with the complexities of the modern supply chain.

Modern-day warehouses are complex due to additional constraints from labor shortages, lack of warehouse space and increased order volume. This new level of complexity drives the need to add sophisticated planning and scheduling tools to address constraint-based issues within the warehouse.

Today’s WMS applications remain functionally siloed and fail to optimize end-to-end processes. At most sites, to get around these siloed shortcomings, there are numerous manual “spreadsheet” steps, tribal knowledge processes, or python scripts developed to extend existing capabilities and enable operators to do their jobs effectively.

To provide the value that executives are looking for without the traditional cost of WMS upgrades or projects, a new category of “WMS accelerator” software is emerging. WMS accelerators exist to look across all the fragmented operations at a distribution center (or campus of distribution centers) and optimize labor, touches, and inventory to drive efficiency.

WMS accelerators pull in data from warehouse management, yard management, order management, visibility and production systems to provide a single, unified view of operations. They then take all that data and apply digital twin technology to predict what will happen. This technology takes in the current state from all systems and shipment and order information, and plays the future forward based on known constraints such as labor, inventory and task times.

Playing forward warehouse operations identifies process bottlenecks but doesn’t resolve them. To do that effectively, WMS accelerators create a prescriptive plan to ensure that demand is met while respecting all the existing constraints inside the building, taking into account labor availability, inventory availability, task sequences and more. This process creates optimal schedules for everybody involved in the operation.

These solutions adapt and rebalance activities based on what actually happens inside of a warehouse in near-real time. It’s important to balance labor with what needs to be done to fill orders on time. Big distribution centers have hundreds of inbounds and outbounds each day. Managing all these activities can’t be done on paper or in the WMS.

Practically speaking, WMS accelerators rearrange picking schedules, change dock times (while still meeting the carrier pick-up time), create transfers, schedule just-in-time replenishments and much more, to ensure that all shipments are made without inventory cuts. A WMS accelerator enables all crews to work off of one single playbook, with much of the scheduling adaptive to changes and, most importantly, automated.

Outlook:

WMS accelerator technology is revolutionizing how warehouse operations are run, while simultaneously pulling the warehouse software landscape out of the dark ages and into the 21st century. With implementation times on the scale of weeks to months, WMS accelerators are quickly becoming a household name for consumer goods, grocery and direct-to-customer organizations.

Keith Moore is chief product officer with AutoScheduler.AI.

RELATED CONTENT

RELATED VIDEOS

Warehouse Management Systems
  • Related Articles

    How Smart Warehouse Orchestration Helps Sustainability Efforts

  • Related Directories

    SnapFulfil

Keith Moore, SupplyChainBrain Contributor

How Smart Warehouse Orchestration Helps Sustainability Efforts

More from this author

Subscribe to our Daily Newsletter!

Timely, incisive articles delivered directly to your inbox.

Popular Stories

  • DOCUMENTS BEARING THE INSIGNIA OF US CUSTOMS AND BORDER PROTECTION LIE ON A TABLE

    New CBP Regs Call for Greater Diligence by Brokers in Reporting Security Breaches

    Freight Forwarding/Customs Brokerage
  • A WORKER IN A WAREHOUSE, SUPERIMPOSED WITH GRAPHICS SHOWING SUPPLY NETWORK

    Enabling Intelligent Visibility With Supply Chain Analytics

    Data Management (Big Data/IoT/Blockchain)
  • GSCMS-Promo.png

    Watch: Introducing the Global Supply Chain Marketing Summit

    Education & Professional Development
  • A HAND TURNS A LARGE, LIGHTED DIAL WITH THE WORD RISK ON IT iStock-NicoElNino-1364371014.jpg

    Measuring KPIs and KRIs for Comprehensive Supplier Performance Management

    Technology
  • DEEPLY CRACKED EARTH UNDER A BLUE CLOUDY SKY

    Why Maritime Supply Chains Must Adapt to Sustainability Regulations

    Ocean Transportation

Digital Edition

Scb nov 2022 sm

2022 Supply Chain Innovator of the Year

VIEW THE LATEST ISSUE

Case Studies

  • New Revenue for Cloud-Based TMS that Embeds Orderful’s Modern EDI Platform

  • Convenience Store Client Maximizes Profit and Improves Customer Service

  • A Digitally Native Footwear Brand Finds Rapid Fulfillment

  • Expanding Apparel Brand Scales Seamlessly with E-Commerce Technology

  • How a Global LSP Scaled its Security Program and Won More Business

Visit Our Sponsors

Orderful Yang Ming Alithya
Barcoding Blue Yonder BNSF Logistics
CoEnterprise Data Capture Deposco
E2open GAINSystems Generix
Geodis GEP GreyOrange
Here Honeywell Intelligrated IFM
Infor Inmar Keelvar
Kinaxis Korber Lean Solutions Group 2H
Liberty SBF Locus Robotics Logility
LogistiVIEW Lucas Systems MCA Connect
MPO Nvidia Old Dominion
OpenText ORTEC Overhaul
Parsyl PMMI QIMA
Redwood Logistics Ryder E-commerce by Whiplash Saddle Creek Logistics
Schneider Dedicated Setlog Holding AG Ship4WD
Shipwell Tecsys TGW Systems
Thomson Reuters Tive Trailer Bridge
Vecna Robotics Verity
Verusen
  • More From SCB
    • Featured Content
    • Video Library
    • Think Tank Blog
    • SupplyChainBrain Podcast
    • Whitepapers
    • On-Demand Webinars
    • Upcoming Webinars
  • Digital Offerings
    • Digital Issue
    • Subscribe
    • Manage Your Subscription
    • Newsletters
  • Resources
    • Events Calendar
    • SCB's Great Supply Chain Partners
    • Supplier Directory
    • Case Study Showcase
    • Supply Chain Innovation Awards
    • 100 Great Partners Form
  • SCB Corporate
    • Advertise on SCB.COM
    • About Us
    • Privacy Policy
    • Contact Us
    • Data Sharing Opt-Out

All content copyright ©2023 Keller International Publishing Corp All rights reserved. No reproduction, transmission or display is permitted without the written permissions of Keller International Publishing Corp

Design, CMS, Hosting & Web Development :: ePublishing