Assignment help on WMS for Auto Part Business
System Vision Document for Auto-Parts Manufacturing Warehouse
1. Problem Identification
A warehouse management system (WMS) software allows the organizations to control and administer the overall warehouse operations starting from the time the goods enter the warehouse till the time the goods leave the warehouse for final customers (Ramaa, Subramanya, & Rangaswamy, 2012). A good WMS system allows the companies to reduce labor cost, improve inventory accuracy, reduce lost time, decrease the errors in shipping and picking of orders and improve responsiveness. Inventory management in automotive spare parts business is very important because overstocking would mean that the inventory is becoming obsolete or is being wasted due to rusting (Kalchschmidt, Zotteri, & Verganti, 2003). Similarly understocking of some inventory parts will mean car manufacturing companies will rely on some other suppliers hence losses are likely to incur.
Given the case study, Jack and Daniel are facing issues in their WMS that is unable to handle dynamic procedures in moving and storing inventory at peak efficiency and at lowest cost. Jack and Daniel have shown concerns about the capability of current WMS as it is not fulfilling its main functions like order processing, inventory tracking, order loading/offloading, packing and creating outbound documentations as well as crystal reports for the organization. Due to these issues and problems in current WMS, it is recommended that a new system (preferably Fishbowl) to be deployed for the organization for managing the inventory and order processing at inbound, storage and outbound levels. This system will be deployed on basis of wireless technologies i.e. mobile applications, cloud and RFID.
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2. Capabilities of Software
Jack and Daniel, in the meeting have outlined the minimum capabilities that the Fishbowl must show i.e. inventory control, order processing, pickup and processing of orders, order load management, system alerts, packing of orders and creation of outbound communication reports. All of these capabilities are expected of Fishbowl to be apparent so that the efficiency of inventory management can be increased and lowest cost can be achieved (Amoah, 2017). Below are the expected capabilities of Fishbowl that will help Jack and Daniel in achieving their objectives.
2.1 Auto part Stock Movement
The new proposed WMS will allow Jack and Daniel to use advanced tracking system using barcoding and radio-frequency identification (RFID) for making sure that the inventory can be found easily whenever it is needed to be moved (Arevalo, 2016).
The newly proposed WMS will allow Jack and Daniel to automatically track the inventory as it progresses from receiving to dispatching while taking into account all the adjustments like returns and credits. Fishbowl will also have the additional capability of recalculating the minimum and maximum stock levels so that stock runouts and over stocking be eliminated (Castillo, 2017). This WMS will allow Jack and Daniel to achieve efficiency at lowest cost possible through automatic demand predictions based on sales history.
Similarly, Fishbowl will provide a complete physical map on wireless phones and tablets of Jack and Daniel along with their team members so that the workers can find exact bin location for inventory picking, packing, receiving and counting.
2.2 Auto part Inbound Activities
The newly proposed Fishbowl WMS will also allow the Daniel and Jack to put-away and retrieve inventory while receiving in the warehouse. It will help warehouse workers to locate the goods whenever it is demanded. In the inbound activities Fishbowl will also allow zone picking, wave picking, batch picking, lot zoning and task interleaving that will allow the warehouse workers to work in most efficient way when picking and packing the orders (Software Advise, 2019).
The new WMS will also aid Jack and Daniel to automate re-order suggesting and help in multi-sourcing. It will offer lead-time calculations and improve order efficiency by helping in inter-branch transfers of orders (Fishbowl, 2019). With full tracking of orders, the company will be able to ensure that the orders are stocked at optimum levels and inventory shortage is unlikely to incur. Similarly, overstocking cost in warehouse will also reduce.
2.3 Auto part Outbound Activities
In order to enhance the sales and improving customer experience, outbound activities of warehouse must be managed efficiently. The Fishbowl will allow Jack and Danial to handle shipping cross-decked items and breaking the bulk orders. The software will allow company to pick documents received per order and conduct a combination of outbound orders. This will be done through automatic shipment of orders, picking up of items with serial or lot numbers, tracking serial number of outbound orders (Fishbowl, 2019).
The outbound activities of Fishbowl will also allow Jack and Daniel to direct the items that are on awaiting shipment status from the receiving zone towards the shipping zone. By doing so, the company will not have to worry about placing the orders in cross-docking or storage. Fishbowl will also provide easy-to-use shipping options along with the projected costs and will reflect on the inventory real-time deliveries and show a list of items that are already shipped (Fishbowl, 2018).
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2.4 Documentation
Apart from order load management, processing of orders, inventory controls and order processing, Fishbowl will allow Jack and Daniel in generating outbound documentation, having system alerts and getting crystal reports (Fishbowl, 2019a). Fishbowl allows the businesses to simplify the record maintenance and administration, with functionality exactly tailored to individual requirements of Jack and Daniel.
Fishbowl software will create a calendar in which the roles will be assigned to users within the software. Through this, the equipment performance reports and outbound document reports will be automatically generated. The software will also show landed cost of orders and project cost estimates (Fishbowl, 2019a). The system alerts will also be sent automatically to Jack and Daniel wherever stock is broken, moved or expired. Apart from that Fishbowl will allow Jack and Daniel to keep full record of inventory buffer levels i.e. avoiding inventory shortage or over-storage.
3. Business Benefits
Fishbowl will provide Jack and Daniel to efficiently control the movement of the materials within their warehouse. It will shorten the storage period of inventory, reduce the errors, automatically track the movement of orders inbound and outbound, keep a record of orders received and dispatched, improve the delivery reliability, utilize the warehouse space, decrease the required time to pickup the order, packing the order and transferring it to other warehouses (Fishbowl, 2019a). It will also increase the efficiency of warehouse as inventory shortages wouldn’t incur and over stocking will be reduced causing extra space in the warehouse where more customers’ orders could be received. Fishbowl will reduce errors and time taken to move and dispatch order that will reduce the cost for the company as well. Hence, both the aims i.e. achieving efficiency and reducing cost will be achieved by using Fishbowl by Jack and Daniel.
