Warehouse Management System
The most crucial phase within a warehouse management system implementation is building the business case for the requirement of the warehouse management system itself and the selection of the right WMS. The reason is, just because a WMS yielded a lot of benefits to your competitor organization, it is not assured the same WMS is going to be an advantage for your organization.
“Warehouse management system would solve all the Productivity, process, and cost issues within a warehouse is a Myth”– Alvis Lazarus
Steps involved in WMS implementation:
As said above, building the business case for WMS is the most crucial first step. Ideally, a value stream map can be done for the entire supply chain and then the weakest links, process issues and business related issues can be documented. Those issues could then become an opportunity statement and business case for potential WMS implementation.
Once the business case is ready, the opportunity statement has to be quantified in terms of value proposition and and expected ROI to the organization.
Most organizations decide and hire the WMS contractor and then write the process flows. This method would derail the WMS journey of the organization. Even before the decision of DWMS, B business solutions development manual has to be completed.
Well written functional requirement definition would ease out most of the issues which tend to occur between the functional teams and the development teams. FRDs will document all the process touch points, process flows, decision points and performance of the supply chain.
Well written contract and terms and conditions is very mandatory before getting into implementation. At this stage the fee for standard implementation, customized implementation and the maintenance should be clearly documented. Strong project management is required to run the project on time and at the right budget.