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SSA对WMS的介绍
Maximising Payback from Warehouse Management Systems
Separating Fact & Fiction
Stephen Reid, Business Consultant, SSA Global Technologies
INTRODUCTION
There has been a lot written about how warehouse management systems (WMS) can result in:
· inventory reductions
· labour cost reductions
· increases in storage capacity
· increases in customer service
· increases in inventory accuracy.
As someone who has experience in both managing a warehouse and also in implementing SSA GT’s warehouse management system – Warehouse Boss, I have found that the payback from any sound WMS implementation is:
· Increased inventory accuracy by enforcement of accurate putaway and picking confirmation.
· Reduction in labour costs via process optimisation in the areas of cross docking, activity-based directed putaway, flow optimised directed picking and dynamic replenishments. Also, reduction in labour costs can flow from real-time transaction updating via radio frequency (RF).
· Increased ability to service the customer through technology enablement that reduces order turn-around times and improves number of orders delivered accurately, in-full and on-time.
· Increased ability to satisfy regulatory requirements. The capability to easily trace lot information, manage expiry and build in rules to manage inventory redundancy, as well as define storage rules to maintain product separation, and ensure the correct putaway of hazardous, environmentally sensitive or other stock with specific storage and handling requirements. Also a WMS will provide adherence to packing, handling and shipping rules.
There is the possibility of inventory reduction, however this is dependent on a number of factors, including declines in safety stock due to increased accuracy and efficiency and falls in redundant stock due to better management of lots/shelf dates and the like.
Storage capacity may also be better utilised with capacity management processes such as automated part-pallet consolidation and use of putaway rules to define best-fit storage locations, which may reduce inappropriate use of storage equipment.
The key words here of course are sound implementation. Any implementation must take into account a number of factors, not least the environmental impacts. Some of the most common trends I have found over the last few years include:
ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACTS
Changing Trading Conditions
Smaller Orders More Often
The last decade has seen a shift away from bulk ordering to smaller orders, more often. This has come about with organisations better managing cash by holding less inventory; ERP system implementations that assist in managing demand planning and forecasting with higher accuracy; the advent of eCommerce and just in time principles. This trend naturally puts the onus back on to the distributor to ensure that enough stock is being held or can be sourced quickly enough to support the variable demand.
VMI/Consignment Inventory
One trend that I believe will escalate in the next couple of years in Australia & New Zealand is one that is occurring in the US now. Large US retailers are utilising consignment inventory and vendor-managed consignment inventory (VMI), to reduce their stock holding costs. This of course puts the burden of inventory cost back on to the distributor. This also requires the distributor to be better at forecasting/collaborating with suppliers and customers and be much more efficient and accurate at storing, picking and shipping stock in order to respond effectively.
In some verticals, particularly in the plastic moulding industry, they have been using this concept for years and attaching service level agreements (SLAs) with severe penalties for delivery failures, to the agreement.
EDI/eCommerce
Major retailers place other demands on distributors. These include the requirement to accept EDI orders and send Advanced Ship Notices (ASN) to confirm delivery, delivery time-slots, pick-to-store orders etc.
EDI orders have in some cases eliminated the Customer Service gatekeeper and therefore are not intercepted by anyone. This is because EDI orders can be invisible until they hit the system. This can be both a benefit and a problem. If the order is outside the normal quantity/timeframe/product range for a customer, this naturally will impact the ability to supply in the required timeframe. However, distributors may not know about this order until it is too late to interact with the customer, thus having a detrimental effect on customer service levels. Conversely, with EDI, orders are processed much more quickly. By utilising the flow-through process, orders can be received by the ERP system and appear on the picking operators radio frequency (RF) queue without having to be double or triple handled.
Customer Service Requirements
eCommerce can cause huge problems in a warehouse. In my experience, most warehouses are not equipped to cope with the dramatic increase in the number of orders for very small quantities. Many organisations then begin to consider outsourcing this entire process, which of course can result in a set of other problems, namely, defining a process to supply the outsourcer with stock, and capturing meaningful sales information and statistics.
Regulatory Requirements
Regulatory authorities are also putting pressure on warehouse operators by increasing requirements for lot tracing, serial number tracking, storage and handling restrictions for different product classes. Also included are environmental considerations such as spillage prevention and enhanced fire prevention and in some cases, restricting operating hours to reduce noise and other activity when the operation is located close to residential areas.
Supply Chain Collaboration
Add to this the growing number of collaborative arrangements with business partners – making forecasts visible/available to key suppliers and gaining access to customers’ forecasts. This can place tremendous pressure on warehouse managers to increase accuracy levels, reduce order turn-around time and increase cost stabilisation whilst reducing costs.
More Challenging Distribution Scenarios To Retailers
Distribution to retail has always been the cause of some concern for warehouse managers. Typically in Australia and New Zealand, the big retailers require compliance to their own unique trading standards of packing, labelling, order picking and packing, ASN structure etc. These standards even differ between different retail chains within the retail groups eg Grace Bros, Myer, Coles, Kmart and Target are all members of the ColesMyer group but each has its own standards.
Distribution Centre Orders
Distribution Centre (DC) orders in the Woolworths and Myer structure are delivered by EDI as a single order which must then be broken up by the supplier and discretely picked, packed and labelled by store to which that particular DC delivered. The ASNs have to be delivered to the retailers so they can receive these orders into the DC and immediately crossdock them for trans-shipment onto a truck for delivery to the store.
Spreadsheet Orders
Kmart and Target send a similar concept of spreadsheet orders which are two-dimensional orders that need to be broken up and picked, packed and delivered discretely by store number. They typically order in case or pallet quantities for the total order, but when broken up by store, the quantities are often less than a full case requiring pick and pack.
Custom Pallet Configurations
Some of the grocery retailers such as Woolworths require their own pallet configurations to satisfy transport and storage requirements. These are not often the same as production pallets from a supplier. There are two ways to manage this. Either create custom pallets from production or configure these pallets at the time of picking.
Woolworths also require less than pallet quantities to be on a separate pallet, with these pallets stacked to 1.2 metres high. This requires pallet building capabilities in the WMS software.
Promotions/Kits
Promotions and kits are becoming a major part of doing business in retail. Managing these in the warehouse – yes, they are often a warehouse task, produces problems of a different type. Rather than generate bill of materials (BOMs) and Routings and running Works Orders through the manufacturing system for kits, the WMS is now required to manage this type of kitting activity completely separate from manufacturing. Those companies that don’t manufacture are unlikely to have manufacturing systems, so it becomes important to have kit building capabilities in the WMS to solve this issue.
Other Considerations
For distribution to retail, accurate tracking of such things as serial numbers, lot/batch details including shelf life/sell by/use by dates become important. A WMS must be able to facilitate the tracking of these numbers right through the supply chain to ensure adequate responses to recalls/faults or contamination issues.
A supplier must be able to send ASNs in the format required by the retailer and ensure that the information in them is consistent with the parcel contents.
Some retailers require price labelling, this seems to be especially true of some of the hardware chains who push this back onto the distributor.
Catch weight, and the appropriate labelling is a requirement in the food industry, especially for products sold as units but priced by weight eg: gourmet cheeses, chickens, legs of ham etc.
New Manufacturing Processes
Not only does a WMS need to support processes such as lot/batch tracking, FIFO, raw material issues and finished good receipts, but it also needs to adapt to new trends such as lean manufacturing that more and more manufacturers are adopting. Therefore, there needs to be a level of flexibility and scalability in a WMS to allow for manufacturing process changes.
KEY IMPROVEMENTS TO THE WAREHOUSE VIA TECHNOLOGY ENABLEMENT
RF Utilisation
The WMS you select MUST be designed around RF. Processes must be optimised for RF – they are very different to those used by paper-based WMS. The WMS must also allow multi-mode utilisation eg: Directed RF, paper-based RF confirmation and paper-based modes to allow it to be functional in different operational areas. A good WMS will also prioritise, sequence and assign RF tasks easily and allow a user to define RF tasks such as maintenance, sweeping, packing and kit building. A good WMS will not require middleware to facilitate RF.
Speed of Response
RF devices are attached via a base station to a TCP/IP network. They generally are seen by the host system as a terminal and operate as if they are a terminal. All transactions update the database immediately.
Accuracy
There are limited benefits when using data capture terminals in warehouse compared to RF. A data capture device stores transactions until they can be downloaded to the host system. With RF, accuracy is increased by barcode scanning rather than data entry on a RF terminal. Barcode scanning has an error rating of 1 scan in 1,000,000 and improving rapidly.
Faster Productivity / Minimal Training
Past implementations have shown that a new warehouse operator can become productive within 2 hours rather than the 2 weeks it can take on an old paper-based system.
Goods Inbound
ASN Receipts
By receiving ASNs from suppliers directly into a WMS, receipts can be scheduled with as much visibility as possible.
PO Receipts
Expected receipts can be generated by PO release and Shop Order release to enable receipt scheduling and planning.
Receipt Dock Scheduling
The receiving process can be completed without the need for traditional data entry, direct from the unloading dock using RF Terminals with built-in barcode scanners.
RF Receiving
Receiving with RF enables the receipt dock supervisor or even the unloading forklift operator to initiate the receipt process, confirm the receipt quantities, generate the putaway location assignments, generate lot/batch or serial number records, assign dispositions to received stock etc.
With RF enablement, staging of receipted stock is managed entirely by electronic means. Stock can be dropped at receipt staging docks for additional work or testing prior to actual putaway, all as part of the RF process. In addition, all transactions can be monitored/managed on the RF queue.
RF Putaway
RF putaway is usually to pre-assigned locations with a WMS. These assignments are allocated by the system based on the user-defined rules entered into the system. These assignments can be based on a number of different characteristics such as ABC Activity Class, size, weight, quantity, lot status, disposition, various item categories such as hazardous codes, stacking capability.
The rule sets also allow for a putaway operator to over-ride the assigned location.
The rule sets also allow for the putaway operators to choose the location themselves.
The putaway process requires the operator to confirm via RF the location, the item number and the quantity as well as the batch ID or serial number where appropriate. This accurate putaway is the basis for accurate picking!!!
Internal Processes
Internal processes like those defined below, generate transactions on the RF queue which can then be managed and prioritised by the Warehouse manager. In addition, these tasks then form the basis of Operator Utilisation reporting and KPI generation.
Cycle Counting
Most WMS support various methods of cycle counting. Cycle counts can be triggered automatically based on a number of user-defined criteria such as count when empty, count when short picked. Random cycle counts can also be triggered on the spot using the RF.
Cycle count sets can also be defined to enable periodic counts by item or class, group, range, locations, zones and so on. This allows such things as more frequent counts of fast moving or high value items.
The administrator can also define the number of recounts required for errors, whether an operator can re-count their own errors and under what circumstances the counts can update inventory.
In addition, full warehouse stock takes can also be set up.
Replenishments
Replenishments can be triggered in a number of ways including min/max triggers on fixed picking locations or demand based on requirements to satisfy a pick plan.
In addition, independent replenishments enable out-of-hours replenishing of picking locations to limit aisle congestion. This can be accomplished by creating replenishment sets to look at the min/max in fixed picking locations or min/max by product groups.
Capacity Management
Processes to enable the consolidation of part pallets can also be defined in WMS. These include consolidation on receipt or consolidation sets or jobs that can be run independently of other processes. These independent consolidation processes can be utilised out-of-hours or during quiet times or when storage space is critically short.
This same process is used to consolidate block stacks or other storage types. The consolidation sets can be simulated and limited to a number of transactions or products or groups. Lot/batch control issues are also considered.
Kitting
Kitting is increasingly becoming a warehouse task. In most WMS, kitting involves taking quantities of two or more existing SKUs and packing them together to create a new SKU. Typically there is a BOM and some instructions. Pick instructions for the components are generated based on the number of the new SKU required. These pick tasks are written to the RF queue and are picked by the designated operator.
As the new SKU is created, they are confirmed into the system and putaway transactions are generated on the RF queue. As these putaways are completed, the stock is made available for picking for sales orders.
Goods Outbound
Pick & Pack
Picking and packing loose items is typically a headache in most warehouses. Determining which cartons to pack into, how to control this process and then confirm the quantities in each carton can be managed by WMS. Some systems include carton packing algorithms to determine which cartons to use and which items to put in them. This is usually only suitable for products that are all very similar in size and shape.
Alternately, a quality WMS will allow the picker to determine what goes into each carton.
Both these methods create carton manifests which in turn create the SSCN code sent as an Advanced Ship Notice to the customer. Typically, the WMS will include rules for auditing parcels prior to shipment.
Batch Picking
WMS will enable batch picking with just one pass through the pick faces for picking into a tote, for multiple orders, and for taking the picked items to a packing area for packing into cartons. This requires less visits to the pick face but requires double-handling of the items.
WMS will also cater for batch picking to a trolley. This enables several orders to be picked discretely into their shipping cartons, usually on a trolley, with one pass through the pick faces.
With WMS, all of the required RF transactions will appear on the RF queue where they can be monitored and managed more easily.
Crossdocking
Crossdocking is the process of assigning picking requirements to a dock where goods are expected to arrive soon to satisfy the pick requirements. This eliminates the requirement to put received stock away into a storage location only to be picked again for the order. When locations are assigned at receipt initialisation, AWMS looks for demand on the crossdock and assigns the exact quantity from the receipt to the crossdock location. The picker then confirms the pick from the crossdock. This process is entirely managed by the system, with transactions appearing on the RF queue.
Labelling
Labelling stations are defined around the warehouse, where label printers are situated. Typically, a picker stops off at the label printer on his way to the shipping consolidation area, prints the required shipping label(s), affixes the label and continues on to the shipping consolidation area.
Order Consolidation
Orders, where different products are picked from different zones, by different pickers are consolidated in dock floor areas or shipping lanes.
Dock/Lane Confirmation
If picking a single SKU requires more than one operator or step, then ownership of the transaction should be passed between operators at Pick and Drop stations which can be defined anywhere in the warehouse which makes sense in the process. This is usually used where say a high-rise or wire-guided forklift passes a picked item to another operator who then carries the item to the shipping dock. In these situations, operators must confirm the picked items or parcels into the shipping consolidation area by scanning both the parcel ID and the dock ID. Only when all parcels for the order are confirmed in the dock, can the order be ship confirmed.
Truck Confirmation
An additional process in WMS allows orders to be scanned through a dock door onto a truck for final confirmation.
Advanced Ship Notice
Typically an Advanced Ship Notice can be generated for transmission to the customer at the time of shipment confirmation.
Integration with Material Handling
A good WMS will contain interfacing structures to enable two-way interfacing with materials handling systems such as carousels, sortation and palletising systems and pick-to-light systems. This can be of great benefit because it removes the needs for operators to carry RF terminals.
CONCLUDING NOTE
By no means have I been able to cover all of the value that a WMS can deliver to an organisation. What I have attempted to do is show the areas in which a WMS can have the most impact. It is most important when using a WMS to ensure that it covers all of the main functionality I have outlined here.
In addition, many warehouse operations tend to take on WMS that have a lot of functionality, but then find that they are unable to be flexible enough to cater for their specific SKUs or processes. Therefore, it is also essential that a WMS be chosen that has enough flexibility to adapt to the changing needs of the warehouse. As I outlined earlier, there are significant environmental trends that constantly impact the way a warehouse operates. This consideration has to be combined with the need for a warehouse operation to scale up or down depending on demand. Even the smallest warehouse will find that peak times may bring out the worst in their WMS.
Finally, a WMS must deliver a low cost of total ownership to the organisation. If a WMS is inexpensive upfront but requires significant implementation or support which compromises its total cost of ownership, then it is not going to deliver the ROI required in today’s constantly changing environment.
ABOUT STEPHEN REID
Stephen Reid is a Consultant for SSA Global Technologies. Stephen has approximately 20 years experience in IT in the manufacturing and logistics industries with varied experience working for both vendors and clients. Prior to joining SSA Global Technologies, Stephen was employed in Pre-sales and Post-sales roles at Computer Associates. In this capacity, he consulted on a number of warehouse management system and ERP implementations, including Breville and the L’Oreal Luxury Products Division.
Most recently, he has worked with implementing emerging eCommerce and wireless technologies: eProcurement and web storefronts, BAM (Business Activity Monitoring), KPI deployment, workflow enablement, process automation, exception management and EAI.
Stephen’s experience on the client side is prolific. Early in his career, he worked in a programming capacity at Polaroid, Eli Lilly, Beiersdorf and Talman. From here he moved to senior IT roles, holding the IT Manager role at GBC Australia, a subsidiary of General Binding Corporation. Stephen then took on the dual role of IT and Inventory Manager at the TDG Logistics operated National Distribution Centre for Lever Rexona. TDG are one of the largest 3rd party logistics providers in Australia.
ABOUT SSA GLOBAL TECHNOLOGIES INC
SSA Global Technologies, Inc., is a leading provider of enterprise software and services to the world's industrial sector companies with a focus in the automotive supply, consumer goods, pharmaceutical/chemical and general manufacturing industries. SSA GT's enterprise resource and planning (ERP) platforms easily integrate with strategic partner applications to deliver e-commerce, business intelligence, customer relationship management (CRM) and supply chain management (SCM) solutions.
Headquartered in Chicago, SSA GT serves more than 9,000 longstanding, market-leading companies in over 90 countries from more than 70 worldwide offices. For additional information, visit the SSA GT Web site at www.ssagt.com.
ABOUT WAREHOUSE BOSS
Warehouse BOSS is SSA GT’s fully integrated advanced warehouse management system. It integrates with a variety of ERP solutions and runs on either the AS/400 platform or on a choice of NT, UNIX or Linux. It has proven rules-based management architecture, radio frequency (RF) and barcode support, and suits both bulk and split-case operations. Batch and serial number tracking is offered and an optional transportation solution can be added. |
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发表于 2004-8-13 14:36
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