WAREHOUSE MANAGEMENT SAP: GUIDELINES FOR A SUCCESSFUL PROJECT

Warehouse management is a complex challenge for modern companies. Lean, effective and coherent processes are the goal of every company that aims to grow and compete but, when it comes to warehouse management, management and procedural problems that the companies have to deal with daily are numerous.

Here are the main issues:

Identification of locations and materials: warehouses are often not sufficiently organised and do not have a correct subdivision and identification of single cells or shelvings and materials; this involves obvious organisational deficiencies and difficulties in finding goods.
Impact management, based on the operator's memory and not on a specific classification of locations and materials, resulting in the risk of a loss of time in order fulfillment or even sending the wrong goods. This is because the correctness of the process is based on the memory of who is working and not on codes and specific data.
No optimisation of the warehouse in terms of occupied space, goods location and goods classification in warehouse.
No storage and collection logic: in the absence of structured processes the goods often are simply left in the first free space inside the warehouse. In some contexts, however, especially in the case of perishable goods, it becomes essential to adopt the FIFO logic (first in first out). However, this approach is often not possible, when the whole process is based only on the operators' memory.
Lastly, warehouse management systems are often not effectively integrated inside the business processes: indeed, it is necessary to develop a communication between the management and the system that rules the warehouse, in order to avoid incongruities and different data in the two platforms.

SAP answer for an effective WM

To all these issues, SAP answers with a set of technological advanced solutions able to make the warehouse management processes increasingly lean, effective and fluid. Foolproof.

SAP WM solution has, indeed, the advantage of a perfect integration between the warehouse management system and the company management: WM data are inserted just once and are always available for operators’ consultation. Moreover, with SAP it is possible to develop real strategies of storage and collection to establish a logic with the function of guiding the operator in his different activities. It is possible, for example, to define some warehouse missions: through radio frequency systems perfectly integrated with SAP, the operator can see on his handheld in endowment the mission to be performed, containing all the data as a result of the barcodization of locations and goods, and this way contributing to greatly reduce the time of execution of the activity. This way, in a few minutes and eliminating the chances of error, the mission is completed, generating useful information in real time, like for example the fact that the collected goods are no longer available.

With SAP WM, furthermore, warehouse optimisation is a goal at hand: it is possible, infact, to decide how to organise the areas dedicated to different materials, also in terms of space, with the help of the system that is able to control maximum weight and number of items allowed for a certain location. To this aspect is joined the possibility of defining collection logics to facilitate operations and activities, according to the different locations and positions of materials.

Software Business is able to support your company in the identification of the solution for your warehouse management more in line with your business!