The fluctuating market demand and mass product customizations have made it more difficult for manufacturers to manage their inventory effectively. Moreover, many manufacturers entered the fourth industrial revolution with siloed departments and IT solutions that prevent them from optimizing material management.

Unsurprisingly, more and more companies turn to MES and WMS software for the solution. Considering that MES provides real-time insight into the production process and WMS oversees warehouse operations, integrating the two solutions helps connect the dots – and enables using data to build better products more efficiently.

The importance of good warehouse practices

Your warehouse is a hub of activity. It’s in charge of ensuring that the production floor has enough raw materials and other required components to work smoothly and with no unscheduled downtime. Your warehouse is also responsible for keeping the end customers happy and satisfied with agile fulfillment strategies and timely shipments.

The proper warehouse layout design, i.e., one that fully utilizes the available space so that both finished goods and raw materials are easy to store and retrieve, also influences your factory’s performance. That, combined with warehouse automation that frees your warehouse operators from manual and repetitive activities, results in time and cost reductions. 

Ultimately, end-to-end traceability for each unit that enters and leaves your warehouse enables you to identify bottlenecks within your supply chain and fulfillment strategy – and to increase revenue by making data-driven decisions.

Unsiloing the production and warehouse data with MES

The most significant benefit of using MES to manage plant logistics and materials is synchronizing communication and information exchange between the warehouse and production teams. The correlation starts with the replenishment process, just-in-time delivery of the new materials to the line, and the put-away process of finished goods. 

To efficiently support all these processes, the warehouse requires access to data provided by the MES system. For example, MES tracks the Bill of Materials, production order schedule, and current production status, all required to accurately and optimally handle replenishment orders. 

Warehouse operations and production processes unified, at last.

Warehouse Management as we know it is changing.  From software used to manage the receiving, put away, locate, pick, and ship products to a far more sophisticated system that closely integrates with production systems and provides a holistic overview of your factory’s performance. 

Using a solution like DELMIA Apriso allows you to maintain sufficient inventory levels, shorten your delivery dates, reduce waste, enabling you to produce higher quality products at a lower cost.