CognitOps Insights
The Future of Warehouse Managements Systems: Data
The future of warehouse management systems will be to share their data with other systems. The greatest gain in warehouse performance is dependent on freeing and operationalizing data from the WMS.
CognitOps ALIGN plugs into any WMS, takes advantage of that data set, adds a machine-learning powered intelligence layer and empowers distribution center operators with powerful real-time recommendations.
The Warehouse Management System (WMS) was invented in the early ’90s and quickly became mission-critical to distribution centers across the supply chain. Today, WMS is an integral part of every distribution center, managing retail and eCommerce inventories and serving as systems of record for financial reporting.
Although a Warehouse Management System is critical to operations across the distribution center, innovation has been limited to more flexible transactions, inventory, and channel management Retail and eCommerce channels are becoming increasingly complex, with both DC Ops and Channel Sales exploding in variability, SLA requirements, and speed.
Yet WMS vendors primarily chose to focus on enabling channel sales, and have deprioritized innovating their warehouse products beyond core transactional execution capabilities — causing no end in pain for DC operators.
**Gartner Report — “Top Technology Trends Transforming Warehousing Over the Next 5 Years: Part 2, Handling Volatility and Complexity” [Link]
Despite being the most premium — and expensive — solutions, even heavily modified Tier One systems cannot handle the complexity of moderate to highly complex distribution operations. Instead of complex and costly modifications and add-ons, a more straightforward, more economical approach is the use of optimized applications that tie into WMS.
Future of WMS Value: Data
WMSs hold a vast amount of critical data that is essential for the operation of warehouse processes. This includes real-time information on inventory levels, such as the quantity, location, and status of products within the warehouse. WMSs also track the movement of goods from receiving to storage and eventually shipping, recording detailed data on order fulfillment, shipping schedules, and delivery timelines. Labor management data, including worker productivity, task assignments, and equipment usage, is also stored. Additionally, WMSs capture transactional data like supplier information, customer orders, and returns, offering insights into supply chain performance.
The most significant gain in warehouse performance depends on freeing and operationalizing this data. Today warehouse operators are building an ecosystem of either home-grown customizations or Excel / BI reporting layers to try and make sense of their data.
Primary WMS development investments have been focussed on re-architecting: lift and shift to the cloud, web-based UI’s, and maximizing the revenue model as the application becomes commoditized. Versioning of WMS legacy systems has become complex, with upgrades pushed every other year.
Instead, the future of warehouse management systems should focus on opening up to external applications, connecting data, empowering data warehouses, and enabling an application ecosystem around its central hub. Salesforce CRM has used this model to become a legacy-defining warehouse software that generates massive, time-driven data sets ideal for a continuous, machine learning-based optimization approach.
CognitOps ALIGN can easily take advantage of that data set and leverage it for advanced insight and analytics – powering warehouse optimization. CognitOps is a comprehensive warehouse resource planning and optimization platform built on leveraging the massive stack of data currently locked in the WMS; We can connect to any WMS, draw that data, and empower DC operations.
Find the visibility your operation needs with CognitOps. Get in touch here.
See how CognitOps can free your data from your legacy WMS.
