Warehouses and distribution centers are dynamic environments where many different challenges arise. Sometimes those challenges go beyond the normal issues to become overwhelming, and start to impact the performance of the business. A Warehouse Management System (WMS) can help a business with many of these challenges, yet many smaller and medium-sized businesses hesitate to move from a manual paper-based approach to even a rudimentary WMS, based on fears about cost and disruption.
Serendipitously, Christmas and Chanukah fall at the same time this year, which may mean less pain for retail logisticians aiming to get all those packages to customers on time - and to recognize 2016 revenue. And this promises to be a pretty good year for retailers: According to the NRF, retail sales should grow 3.4 percent this year.
The publication of the Industrial Internet Security Framework by the IIC is a vital early step towards creating security in the Industrial IoT. Strong security becomes increasingly crucial as more and more critical infrastructure becomes connected and remotely controllable.
More than ever, retailers are reimagining their businesses - the functions their stores provide, the value they bring, and how they operate, driven not only by the rise of omnichannel and the need to respond to competitive threats from Amazon and others, but as well by the possibilities that new technologies create. We are at the beginning of a new era, where the store is a multi-faceted venue with the ability to fulfill orders with the efficiency of a warehouse and capture shoppers' buying behaviors and personalize as well as websites do, all while providing the experiential and human touches that only a physical store can.
Manufacturers, wholesalers and retailers alike are being challenged with diverse, continually changing channel fulfillment demands. Across industries, success (and even survival) depends on the ability to serve customers profitably in the way they expect to be served.
If you think about it, the supply chain's action is outside the office. It is in a factory making things, a warehouse packing and shipping things, in a store where customers are shopping, or in a conveyance on the move.
After a spike more than a decade ago catalyzed by a buying spree of ERP, supply chain, web front ends and so on, one would think that a market like integration would be a no-grow or go-away market. But quite to the contrary, the tool suites, the delivery options, and sales of even traditional elements continue to grow. Why is this?
Today, omnichannel is so much broader than just the technology platform the customer uses for purchases - web, store, mobile, catalogue and so on. At its heart it is really about fulfillment - the customer's choice of fulfillment.
Over-the-top headlines and estimates of the size of the IoT market create more confusion and skepticism about hype than a real understanding of how big the market really is. There needs to be a framework for understanding IoT market size.
