Imagine going to a warehouse where no management systems nor methods exist. What would you expect to see? Complete chaos. Goods stored in random places, handled without a plan, over- and understocked.
Thus, it is crucial to know what warehouse management is, and this is exactly what we will focus on here.
What is Warehouse Management?
Returning to the image from our introduction, warehouse management is all the measures that are undertaken to avoid this potential chaos.
Controlling processes, optimizing routes, prioritizing, analyzing data, and predicting – all of these are a part of warehouse management.
What is warehouse management dealing with? Practically everything. From inbound processes, through storing and slotting, to picking, packing, and handling returns. Wherever something has to be done in a warehouse, management kicks in.
These processes may be manual or automated. Often it is both, combined to optimize the operations within a given facility.
The Role of Warehouse Management
Yet again imagine the chaos of an unmanaged warehouse. What would it bring? For you, as the owner, minimum profits or even losses.
For your customers, long waiting times for both their orders and returns. For your vendors, the lack of profit, since you would not know what to restock on.
So, what is the role of warehouse management? It makes warehouses what they are. It enables us to store goods in smaller, compact facilities, it is the cornerstone of e-commerce, it is the basis for retail as we know it – it simply shapes the world.
But, apart from the perspective of warehouse owners, retailers, and customers, there’s still one more crucial role that warehouse management plays. It helps us make our planet better.
Without it, there would be more trucks needed to deliver goods to the customers, and the machinery at the warehouses would be used more often and inefficiently, creating more pollution.
The environmental crisis would be much bigger than it currently is, even though it already is a major problem.
Improving Warehouse Management
Knowing what is the role of warehouse management, you need to find ways to improve it, and there are some quite viable options.
Even the smallest changes might have a huge impact. The best way to find improvements is by exploring the technological innovations that are available to us.
An excellent example of how you can enhance your warehouse management is WMS – warehouse management system. This type of software is designed purely to improve the processes within your facility.
When combined with a WCS – warehouse control system – it will optimize every aspect of your warehouse, from task distribution, through routing, to delivery.
What is the main advantage of such warehouse management systems? Data analytics. As a human, you will not be capable of analyzing large quantities of data alone, or even with a small team. But, software can do that easily.
Thus, it can help make warehouses even more efficient and better managed than they were ever before, making the lives of every person on Earth easier and better.
The Takeaway
What is warehouse management? It is everything that you do to ensure a smooth workflow within your facility.
Without it, the world would be drastically different. How to improve it? With tools and technologies such as the WMS and WCS. Why? To make the world better.
