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Warehouse management system
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Warehouse Management Systems (WMS) are a key part of the supply chain and primarily aim to control the movement and storage of materials within an operation and process the associated transactions.
The systems also direct and optimizes stock put-away based on real-time information about the status of bin utilization.
Having a WMS in place means you don't depend any more on people's experience, the system has the intelligence.
Warehouse management systems utilize Auto ID Data Capture technology, such as barcode scanners, mobile computers, wireless LANs and potentially RFID to efficiently monitor the flow of products. Once data has been collected, there is either a batch synchronization with, or a real-time wireless transmission to a central database. The database can then provide useful reports about the status of goods in the warehouse.
A good WMS should have (minimum) a flexible location system, utilize user-defined parameters to direct warehouse tasks and use live documents to execute these tasks, have some built-in level of integration with data collection devices.[citation needed]
Many Enterprise Resource Planning systems (ERP), or accounting package warehouse management systems include various degrees of pure WMS functionality as a module within their application. The objective is to provide a method of automatically receiving inventory, processing orders, and handling returns all within a single overall application "umbrella".