Efficient and transparent warehouse management is a decisive factor for the success of any company. It is not only the manufacturing industry that benefits from modern logistics facilities and low operating costs. Warehouse management is just as important for buyers and sellers. After all, efficient warehouse operations go hand in hand with cost savings, customer satisfaction and increased sales.
Warehouse management involves the monitoring of all operations and processes within a warehouse. To ensure a high degree of transparency, warehousing begins with the receipt of the order and ends when the goods leave the warehouse. The following aspects fall under the targeted management of the warehouse:
Thus, warehouse management encompasses various processes and principles that enable smooth operations in the warehouse. This also includes the organizational procedures and processes within the warehouse. Professional warehouse management solutions should therefore consider different aspects and processes.
A warehouse management system ideally simplifies warehouse management. Due to its close connection to other company processes, it is usually a component of an ERP solution. This allows certain processes (such as tracking) to be used for order entry and scheduling in shipping, for example.
The main goal of warehouse management is to optimize warehouse processes. Finally, the appropriate warehouse strategy contributes to higher efficiency and transparency. Nevertheless, it is the specifics of the particular warehouse operation that need to be taken into account when selecting the appropriate software. This means that the warehouse management system should support the existing company processes and optimize them in the long term. It should not be necessary to first adapt the company-specific processes to the software.
Although many companies use the terms “inventory management” and “warehouse management” synonymously, the two approaches differ from each other in key points.
Warehouse management usually takes place in the background and is invisible to customers. Even a large number of employees in the company rarely have contact with warehouse operations. Although warehouse management operates in the shadows, it offers numerous advantages:
DHL Supply Chain successfully completed its global augmented reality pilots and is expanding its “vision picking” solution to more warehouses around the globe, establishing a new standard in order picking for the industry. The smart glasses provide visual displays of order picking instructions along with information on where items are located and where they need to be placed on a cart, freeing pickers’ hands of paper instructions and allowing them to work more efficiently and comfortably.
The international trials have shown an average improvement in productivity by 15 percent and higher accuracy rates. The user-friendly and intuitive solution has also halved onboarding and training times.
An effective warehouse management process requires professional software that fits the needs of the business. While some companies focus on lean warehouse management, others require more comprehensive approaches. For the best possible results, warehouse stock management software should fit individual needs and provide transparency.
The warehouse process varies depending on whether the warehouse is a traditional or a smart warehouse. Nevertheless, warehouse management always follows the following core processes:
Important: To optimize warehouse operations, companies must view all steps as a unit and continuously improve them.
A sound strategy is essential for effective warehouse management. In addition, companies should strive to understand the general principles of warehouse management. They are the basis for integrating warehouse management services into the company in a sustainable way.
Regularly controlling processes is always relevant. It is of secondary importance whether companies opt for comprehensive or lean warehouse management. Regular checking should ensure that complex processes remain traceable, efficient and transparent. At the same time, continuous auditing enables errors or deficiencies to be quickly identified and rectified. As a result, it succeeds in ensuring smooth warehouse management operations.
For effective warehouse operations, it is necessary to define the purpose and objectives in advance. This includes, for example, whether a specific form of warehousing is required. In addition, there might be specific delivery requirements that need to be addressed as part of warehouse operations. These objectives can be used to define a warehouse strategy that takes into account storage space, equipment and manpower.
Excellent customer service thrives on efficient warehouse management. After all, the right products should be delivered as quickly as possible to increase satisfaction. Waiting several days or even weeks for an order is only justifiable under rare and exceptional circumstances. Instead, companies rely on speed and reliability in their normal day-to-day operations. Warehouse management supports this as well, as it provides accurate and detailed key figures around the product.
Large parts of warehouse operations today are based on the analysis of relevant real-time data. This data contributes to the decision-making process. At the same time, they ensure that all processes run as smoothly as possible. This includes, for example, ensuring that products are localized. Alternatively, the warehouse management software can analyze all key data. This would allow goods that are ordered particularly frequently to be repositioned, for example, in order to keep the lines short.
Flexibility and resilience play a central role in warehouse operations. Due to external influences, products or materials can arrive damaged or late, for example. In such situations, the responsible warehouse managers must react immediately. Since it may be necessary to adapt workflows, an e-commerce warehouse management software requires a certain degree of flexibility. This usually consists of redesigning warehouse areas or temporarily adapting the picking process.
A company-specific warehouse strategy is designed to help companies optimize warehouse management. This optimization is necessary to avoid waste and to increase quality and customer satisfaction. For this reason, it can be useful to define different strategies. The main strategies that have proven to be effective in warehouse management are the following:
In order to optimize( E-commerce) warehouse management the collection of various KPIs is essential. These key performance indicators help companies identify and correct problems. This means they are the basis for improving their own efficiency and increasing the quality of processes. The following values are of interest:
These KPIs help companies to regularly review warehouse management. However, continuous monitoring is not enough in many cases. Regularly recurring statistics and reports help to create understanding for the area of warehouse management. At the same time, these reports help to illustrate improvements and optimizations.
TeamViewer Frontline helps companies to optimize manual work processes. To make this happen, the technology is based on a fully integrated augmented reality solution (“AR-Warehouse”). This makes it easy to empower human workers in their digitized work environment.
Digital tools such as smart glasses and other wearables can support employees working in the AR warehouse. This form of digitization helps workers increase productivity and minimize errors. While this technology simplifies warehouse management and makes employees’ workday easier, the company itself also benefits. After all, AR solutions can be implemented for many use cases along the value chain. The basis for this enormous potential is always the right software and the matching wearables.
However, TeamViewer’s focus is not only on corporate groups or large companies. Smaller businesses can also benefit from a good warehouse management software. Combined with the right data glasses and wearables, processes can be simplified and quality increased.