What are the effort drivers in WMS projects and programs to control your warehouse operations? In addition to the often highly focused additional developments for your warehouse management system (WMS), it is initially the logistics structures such as buildings, storage types, order types and customer structure that determine the costs.
In addition, of course, the process diversity in the warehouse and the nesting of processes is a driver of effort: Essentially, it is inbound processes, outbound processes, internal processes within the 4 walls of your warehouse that need to be configured and integrated. Focus on the happy path along the main flow of goods and no mixture of push and pull strategies is important, too. In addition, logic in your order management of your ERP system determines the effort in the WMS as well. The later processes such as invoicing, invoice verification, export, tracking & tracing, etc. do influence the functional scope of your WMS also.
The more interfaces you run, the more expensive it becomes. This rule of thumb applied to 1:1 connections, but integration platforms that run on APIs can now be mapped and tested more quickly than ever before. Nevertheless, the system environment consisting of connected environmental systems, cloud and Wi-Fi infrastructure, mobile handheld or pick-by-voice devices, other hardware and the identification technology at storage locations, items and boxes, containers, pallets shall be standardized and uniformed as much as possible in order to keep complexity costs low.
The organizational and social project environment is another very important driver of complexity. Just think of the effort required in international projects for localized and translated dialogues, printouts, training and documentation and the travel to tests and to support on site during go-live. In addition, the composition and staffing of the WMS project team or program across multiple roll-outs and go-lives, consisting of internal professionals and external WMS experts, is a cost driver - which, if done correctly, ensures success.
Questionnaire on WMS complexity
If you are interested in determining the complexity of your WMS yourself, please use our free complexity analysis questionnaire in German language for DACH region. You tick the most applicable characteristics of your warehouse structures, warehouse processes, system landscape and project environment and then simply send the completed questionnaire back to us by email to mail@benefitgroup.de.
In return, you will then receive a neutral WMS benchmark that shows you complexity of your WMS in comparison to others. We also use the data to assign your WMS to a complexity level S, M, L or XL, which allows us to say how complex your WMS project will be and whether you shall spend, for example, €150,000 or more than €300,000 €.
Contact
If you want to introduce logistics software in warehouse or transport, we will accompany you as your project managers from the first business case through all phases and tests through to commissioning until the return-on-investment (ROI) will be achieved after 6, 12 + 18 months of operation. Promised.
Yours
Rüdiger W. Schwarz
+Benefit Research and Consulting GmbH + Dahlemer Weg 83a + DE 14167 Berlin
T: +49 172 3872 373 + Email: mail@benefitgroup.de + Web: www.benefitgroup.de