Companies must enhance warehouse productivity and visibility if they are to remain competitive, protect their profitability, and position themselves for continuing growth. However, their existing ERP systems often lack the automated capabilities necessary to increase visibility into operations, enhance market agility, and boost warehouse productivity, informs Jonathan Wood, General Manager, India, Middle East, and Africa (IMEA), Infor.
As globally expanding supply chains put operational and cost pressures on companies, so do expanding omni-channel markets that are forcing manufacturers and distributors to not only change how they sell to customers, but to even redefine who their customers are. Customers are exerting further pressure with demands for customization and personalization of products. And with global expansion, comes the challenge of maintaining visibility into inventory, shipping, and tracking—often across borders, continents, and oceans.
Naturally, these increasingly complex—and often costly— factors are forcing manufacturing and distribution organizations to reconsider how their warehouse management practices, processes, and systems need to change in order to improve warehouse productivity and visibility.
Meanwhile, supply chain management has become increasingly difficult as companies source products, components, and materials on a global scale. Manufacturers that once sourced their materials regionally or nationally, now turn to Asia, Latin America, Eastern Europe, and other overseas locations. Similarly, they are distributing their goods more globally as they seek to penetrate new and growing markets. That means products must travel far greater distances and be stored in more locations, aggravating the challenges of visibility and threatening perfect order delivery.
Investing in advanced warehouse management solutions can make manufacturers and distributors reach new levels of warehouse visibility, agility, and productivity by maximizing product placement strategies, prioritizing tasks, implementing productivity standards, and increasing logistics efficiency.
By integrating warehouse management, labor management, transportation management, and third-party logistics (3PL) billing into a unified solution, manufacturers and distributors gain end-to-end supply chain visibility and an efficient execution system that can help them make better decisions and execute those decisions more quickly and sensibly. These investments also lay the foundations for profitable growth and market success in the hypercompetitive markets of today and tomorrow.
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