Imagine this: You've invested heavily in a warehouse management system (WMS), but is it truly operating at peak efficiency? Could there be untapped features and optimization opportunities waiting to be discovered? As e-commerce flourishes and supply chains grow increasingly complex, relying solely on basic WMS functionality is no longer sufficient. This exploration reveals six key strategies to maximize your WMS return on investment and gain competitive advantage.
The Transformative Role of WMS in Modern Warehousing
The past decade—particularly the last eighteen months—has witnessed revolutionary changes in warehouse operations. This critical link in global supply chains now faces unprecedented challenges and opportunities. Surging order volumes, shrinking order sizes, escalating speed requirements, and growing automation demands have created an environment where warehouse operators urgently need tools to optimize labor and space utilization. In this fast-paced fulfillment landscape, WMS stands as a cornerstone technology investment.
Yet like all technological investments, a WMS's value depends entirely on its implementation. Organizations limiting themselves to basic order, inventory, shipping, and fulfillment management features are missing significant opportunities to enhance efficiency and reduce costs. As Gartner Research Vice President Dwight Klappich observes: "Logistics managers are reevaluating why they haven't leveraged advanced WMS capabilities and actively exploring how additional functionality can create new business value."
Overlooked Treasures: The Hidden Features of WMS
Klappich emphasizes that capabilities like labor management, slot optimization, yard management, and wave planning often go underutilized despite their substantial potential. Vendors including Optricity, Blue Yonder, and Manhattan, along with specialists like Easy Metrics, offer robust solutions in these areas that can be "layered" onto existing systems at reasonable cost to deliver measurable business value.
E-Commerce Driven Evolution and WMS Optimization
The relentless growth of e-commerce continues accelerating operational tempos in warehouses and distribution centers. These facilities operated at breakneck speeds even before the pandemic, but 2020's disruptions created unprecedented pressure. Now, as conditions stabilize, operations seek innovative approaches to work smarter, better, and faster in this "new normal" business environment.
Howard Turner, Supply Chain Systems Director at St. Onge Company, explains: "Shippers must respond to growing e-commerce fulfillment demands. This need existed before and continues growing. Over the past year, e-commerce fulfillment became even more critical as shippers maintained customer service levels while addressing unexpected demand volumes."
Achieving this balance requires systems supporting processes like "goods-to-person" picking and the software solutions enabling these activities. "WMS plays a pivotal role here," Turner notes, adding that businesses have significant opportunities to explore their WMS implementations and discover hidden benefits.
Bill Brooks, Vice President of Capgemini's North American Transportation Portfolio, concurs. Many enterprises use only elementary WMS functions without realizing the software's full potential—either because they're unaware of additional features or because their WMS was never fully implemented.
Brooks observes that some organizations fail to innovate with their WMS, neglecting its predictive capabilities and historical data analysis that could create more effective fulfillment models. So how can companies optimize their WMS implementations for greater value?
Six Strategies to Unleash Your WMS's Full Potential
These approaches will help organizations maximize WMS investments, improve operational efficiency, reduce costs, and ultimately enhance customer satisfaction.
1. Establish a Center of Excellence (COE)
For organizations recognizing underutilized WMS or other supply chain management software, creating a COE provides an excellent starting point. Brooks notes that while COEs take various forms, a WMS-focused COE should thoroughly evaluate whether operations truly extract maximum value from the software investment.
"The key lies in ensuring everything is properly configured, operational, and fully implemented," Brooks explains. User feedback proves equally valuable for system improvements. "By examining both technical implementation and user experience," he continues, "you can identify methods to extract more value from your WMS while making it more employee-friendly."
- COEs assess WMS implementation to ensure full utilization
- Collect user feedback to identify improvement opportunities
- Optimize interfaces to boost employee productivity
2. Explore Advanced Options
If your WMS has operated unchanged for a decade without updates or upgrades, you've likely missed valuable new features. "Vendors continuously enhance their platforms with additional functionality," Brooks notes. Emerging technologies being deployed include 5G (for faster connectivity), cloud computing (for universal access), edge computing (for improved responsiveness and bandwidth efficiency), and artificial intelligence.
- Regularly evaluate WMS capabilities against business needs
- Consider upgrading to current versions or adding modules
- Leverage 5G, cloud, edge computing, and AI for performance gains
3. Implement Constraint-Based Planning
Gartner research indicates over 80% of supply chain professionals believe they could have made better decisions during disruptive events. Klappich explains that WMS can help logistics managers adopt constraint-based planning strategies that manufacturers have used for decades. This approach applies strategic limitations to decision inputs, considering operational rules, constraints, and disruptions, then uses AI or other advanced technologies to help fulfillment centers plan more effectively.
"Warehousing has lagged manufacturing by decades in adopting constraint-based planning," Klappich states. He cites Manhattan's Order Streaming technology as an example of how vendors incorporate more constraint-based planning functionality into supply chain platforms.
This technology helps logistics managers easily identify constraints (labor shortages, offline equipment, unpredictable demand, etc.) and use WMS to develop effective response plans. "Warehouses no longer have 10-14 days to complete orders," Klappich observes. "This compressed timeline makes managing increased demand and additional constraints more challenging—creating greater opportunities to extract business value from WMS."
- Constraint-based planning enables better decision-making
- WMS helps identify constraints and develop response plans
- Leverage AI to enhance planning efficiency
4. Blur Warehouse Execution Boundaries
Turner notes that as e-commerce orders differ fundamentally from other order types, WMS vendors have adapted their systems to handle higher volumes of smaller parcels. "These aren't multi-pallet LTL shipments," Turner explains. "Typically, they're just one or two items per order."
To support picking numerous small orders and better connect with automation equipment, WMS vendors increasingly incorporate warehouse execution system (WES) functionality. "Some companies integrate WES as core product components," Turner says, "providing direct control over automated equipment."
- WES functionality improves automated equipment management
- WMS-WES integration enhances picking efficiency
- WMS can process higher volumes of smaller parcels
5. Automate Parcel Manifesting
With e-commerce growing 44% in 2020 and online ordering surges continuing unabated, companies increasingly turn to technology for better parcel manifesting and wave processing management. Turner notes WMS can address both challenges effectively.
"We've seen shippers leverage WMS with robust manifesting engines," Turner states. These engines don't just optimize transportation costs—they provide packaging guidance. "Companies can use WMS for cartonization functionality," he explains. "The software considers picked items' dimensions to determine ideal packaging sizes."
- WMS helps optimize transportation costs
- Provides packaging guidance and recommendations
- Enables cartonization based on item dimensions
6. Enhance Wave Processing
As automation proliferates in warehouses and labor becomes harder to acquire/retain, companies increasingly rely on technology to meet e-commerce fulfillment demands. Turner notes WMS plays a crucial role here, with wave processing representing another functionality that software can manage effectively when properly implemented.
"WMS can identify and group e-commerce orders into waves," Turner explains, "then release them to the floor for specialized picking, handling, and processing. This utilizes batch picking functionality that many companies overlook, despite its proven effectiveness over time."
- WMS identifies and groups e-commerce orders
- Releases orders for specialized processing
- Leverages proven batch picking models
Squeezing Every Drop from the Sponge
Just because WMS technology has existed for forty years doesn't mean these systems can be implemented and left unchanged while business environments transform at lightning speed. To maximize effectiveness in today's rapid fulfillment landscape, these specialized applications require regular review, updates, and optimization aligned with current business needs.
"Throughout WMS's forty-year history, its core functions remained consistent—managing receiving, storage, counting, picking, packing, and shipping," Klappich notes. "The critical question now becomes: What's next? How can your organization reach the next level?"
For many companies, Klappich observes, the answer has involved constantly "squeezing the sponge"—attempting to extract more value from aging systems. Moving forward, he anticipates more organizations will add new functionality layers rather than simply pushing existing features harder.
"Leading companies focus increasingly on advanced WMS capabilities," Klappich concludes, "to extract additional business value from their investments."