Inventory management software white paper

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Yes, install Microsoft Download Manager recommended No, thanks. What happens if I don't install a download manager? Why should I install the Microsoft Download Manager? Learn how these obstacles are key drivers for business process improvements in SCM, enterprise resource planning ERP , order processing, and more.

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They enable the warehouse to stay on top of issues and even predictively and proactively manage the future through sales forecasts and inventory balancing.

They provide the good information needed to move faster, ship sooner, please customers, and protect workers. Yet out of hundreds of possible KPIs, which ones are the most important? Which have problems with the most ripple effects? What KPIs benefits pump up the bottom-line the most? Most importantly, how do you monitor them? This question is foundational; it addresses not just efficiency but also solvency.

The result is support phone lines are clogged, and customers are seething. So customer service, in turn, alerts the warehouse manager, who dives into stock cards, inventory reports, picking lists, and other indicators of what they have in stock.

He discovers major discrepancies between book and physical inventories. No wonder one order out of every four is going unfilled or incorrectly filled! This KPI is truly key. Implement a regular procedure in which you count a limited, but representative, amount of stock based on date or location.

Your WMS should be able to automatically perform this count on a daily, or any other scheduled, basis and then produce reports for review. Warehouses that do not use a WMS for this functionality compromise their own effectiveness. In fact, their survey shows this to be the top benefit.

Just as poor inventory accuracy is linked to downstream problems, good accuracy improves inventory turnover and provides better data for financial planning. How accurately do you pull the correct items, in the correct quantities, to place into the appropriate shipping container? While inventory accuracy is foundational and precedes this one, order filling accuracy is nevertheless a keystone of any successful operation. This KPI can be more subtle than you might realize, with even marginal rates potentially producing outlandish costs.

Wait a minute. Increasing order accuracy by just half a percentage point reduces errors by the thousands each year and the cost of errors by half a million. Order filling accuracy depends on more than just inventory accuracy.

The more you can automate these operations, the easier it will be to generate high accuracy rates. Similarly, this is why analysts at technology research and advisory company Gartner believe that the WMS should be understood and used in a more action-oriented way than they typically are. The alternative is relying on manual, labor-intensive systems that are prone to error and can result in poor production location, slotting and labeling. Too many touch points create vulnerabilities.

Instead, track this KPI via your WMS to streamline, create a more efficient operation, and guarantee customer service improvements and cost effectiveness. On-time ready to ship means that orders including packaging and preparation of any shipping documents are completed and ready for pickup on time.

Maintaining these two metrics is at the heart of keeping the supply chain running smoothly. Whether you should focus on on-time shipment or on-time delivery as your key metric depends on your specific business.

You can always track both, of course. He notes that WMS providers have even created apps for mobile equipment—tablets, smartphones, handheld computers—so that a manager can be automatically alerted via any device when 20 orders are potentially going to be late.

Use of a WMS correlates to higher customer satisfaction and gross margin return of inventory investment. Just make sure the WMS implementation matches your business needs; otherwise, performance can slip. Closely related to the previous two KPIs is a behind-the-scenes metric: order cycle time. Specifically, this KPI tracks how much time is spent between the time an order is placed and the moment it ships.

The objective: minimize order cycle time. As a benchmark, consider best-in-class performance to be less than three hours, with median middle of the road performance at 13 hours. You can look at order cycle time internally or comprehensively.