Managing inventory across a network is fraught with challenges. Enterprise software systems should facilitate company-wide inventory visibility and control, even when inventory is managed in a network of diverse and heterogeneous operating facilities. All too often, when selecting inventory management systems, business decision makers tend to compromise on a solution that can never achieve company-wide inventory visibility and control. Software applications make businesses more productive by eliminating redundant data entry and potential errors. Software enables a business to scale operationally while facilitating high levels of customer service that are typical of the smallest organizations. However, for maximum efficiencies, multi-site businesses require software applications that:
- Don’t force major changes to operating practices
- Take advantage of today’s best practices
- Manage the subtle complexities that are unique to how each particular business drives value for its customers
Increasing customer demands and an ever-changing environment drives businesses today. Some factors that influence business processes are:
- Mergers and acquisitions
- Introduction of new products or product lines
- Addition of new business channels
- Consolidation of facilities
- Business outsourcing
- Increasing transportation cost
- Poor utilization of resources, such as labor, facilities, equipments, locations, and so forth.
- Servicing new customers and fulfilling each of their unique compliance demands
Businesses must manage inventory in a variety of facilities that may include Plant Warehouses, Regional IBM® Sterling Business Centers, Stock Rooms, Stores, and Flow-through Distribution Centers.
Due to the disparate nature of these facilities, each facility employs different operational processes. This leads to complexity in operations and lack of centralized visibility, increased infrastructure costs, and quality issues.
Due to the variety of facilities in a complex warehousing environment, disparate systems are used throughout the network. This results in higher infrastructure and ownership costs at each facility. Integrating systems across such facilities becomes complex, and implementing business process changes is a challenge. The following figure illustrates a typical network built on disparate warehousing systems.
Offering complete visibility and automating operations in a complex warehouse environment requires thorough knowledge of business processes combined with state-of-the-art technology. An efficient warehouse management system helps businesses:
- Achieve increased productivity levels
- Improve inventory accuracy
- Adhere to varying compliance requirements
- Manage logistics effectively
As businesses strive to keep pace with the changing environment, it is also imperative to keep operating costs low. Usually, the trade-off balances the needs against the cost of acquiring and deploying best-in-class software at each facility. Lower cost options today include software that slightly addresses a portion of the labor productivity problem, but fails to deliver the ability to scale those best practices that make a business unique. In many cases, software is used in only the largest facilities, while no software is used in smaller facilities because the costs are too prohibitive.
IBM Sterling Warehouse Management System eliminates the cost versus capabilities trade-off and offers the best-in-class warehouse management software that can be leveraged across all types of inventory stocking situations, from the largest facilities down to the smallest stocking locations.