Adding value outside the four walls
Bob Trebilcock, Editor-at-Large -- Modern Materials Handling, 12/1/2004
There is also value to be gained from extending the reach of the WMS beyond the four walls of the facility.
This is especially true in supply chains that rely on contract manufacturers, third-party logistics providers, consolidation hubs, and crossdock facilities. Here’s what that list includes.
Yard management, which includes dock appointment scheduling, manages the flow of trucks and trailers through the yard the way that WMS manages the flow of inventory through the facility.
Transportation management is an umbrella for a range of applications from freight optimization to parcel manifesting to pooling to international documentation. While TMS can be implemented as a stand-alone solution, there is extra value to be gained as part of an integrated solution.
Hub management coordinates and synchronizes shipments into and out of consolidation centers and crossdock facilities.
Supply chain visibility solutions aggregate data from a variety of applications to track inventory, orders and shipments across the supply chain. Most people are using visibility tools to reduce the load on their customer service departments by allowing their customers to view the status of their orders online rather than on the phone.
Event management and alerting is the ability to monitor a process, a facility or a shipment, and then provide a timely alert when unplanned events happen.
Trading partner management/collaboration takes a variety of forms, but at the end of the day, these solutions allow users to share important information with their suppliers and customers.
RFID infrastructure to manage the data collected by the emerging world of RFID systems is the latest application to be developed by WMS vendors.
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