Fortunately, this purpose-built solution already exists, and it’s called a warehouse execution system (WES). A WES autonomously gathers real-time signals from across the warehouse, then applies artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), and data science to create plans and solve problems.
It matches labor, equipment, and other resources accurately with order volumes, in real time. It ensures that tasks are accomplished quickly, correctly and efficiently — and that high-priority tasks are always completed first. By tracking and managing picking, packing, and shipping processes minute-by-minute, a WES dramatically increases accuracy and efficiency, enabling companies to support much higher order volumes with the same resources.
Today’s warehouse environment is too complex and fast-moving to manage effectively via human cognition, as well as manual planning and analysis. A WES applies advanced AI and ML to gather data, identify exceptions, define resolutions and enact them, autonomously, in mere seconds. It positions the warehouse to sense and react in real time to changes in order volumes, task priorities, and resource availability. Daily task chains are planned and replanned on a continuous basis to ensure all resources — whether human or machine — are always focused strategically on the most important job.
A WES capitalizes on huge volumes of data from across the facility to consider factors like resource location, product location, and travel distances and times. It intelligently and profitably delivers the right task to the right resource at the right time. The result? Decreased steps, faster task completion, capacity smoothing, lower operational costs, and customer service gains.
Let’s look at the example of an order that needs to go out by 5:00 pm, when FedEx or UPS is making a pickup. The WES works backward and ensures that picking starts at a certain time, based on a deep understanding of the warehouse layout, the associated task chain and realistic task completion times. This might sound simple, but remember that the WES is performing these calculations across hundreds or thousands of orders, and weighing complex trade-offs. It’s also reprioritizing automatically as disruptions occur — for example, when an employee leaves early, a robot malfunctions, or a rush order comes in from a top-tier customer.
There’s a lot of buzz around warehouse automation, in which machines are used to accomplish physical tasks. A warehouse execution system adds a crucial layer of decision automation, which is becoming absolutely essential in today’s volatile and disrupted business environment.
With so many variables, so many datapoints, and so many minute-by-minute changes in the warehouse environment, companies need a smart, autonomous solution that can make the right decision, reliably, with no human intervention. More than ever, organizations need to pivot immediately and profitably as conditions change, without stopping to perform manual analysis — and without making intuitive guesses that turn out to be wrong. A WES provides a flawless decision capability, as well as the ability to start executing the right corrective action in seconds, to keep the warehouse on track without interruption. Thanks to machine learning, the WES gets smarter and better at resolving disruptions all the time.
But a warehouse execution system also helps companies take a longer-term, strategic view. Enabled by AI, it understands the complexities of the end-to-end fulfillment workflow, as well as the relationships between different processes and different assets. That means the WES can help identify and achieve meaningful performance improvements. If the warehouse has an average output of 100 cases per hour, but needs to increase that by 20%, the WES can help figure out a practical solution. It can test various strategies such as adding new hires, onboarding a new robot, or changing the distribution center layout.
Given today’s challenging business landscape, more companies are exploring warehouse execution systems. But what should they be looking for? There are five key capabilities that allow these solutions to deliver operational excellence, higher service levels and cost improvements:
It’s clear that companies are embracing the promise of warehouse execution systems, which enable them to achieve more consistent results, even when faced with constant disruption. By applying AI, ML and data science, a WES can maximize customer service and profitability, while reducing resource demands via intelligent orchestration.
Leading organizations are leveraging WES solutions to maximize the utilization and financial return of all their investments, whether labor or robots. In an industry that is rapidly adopting automation and robotics, a WES is the logical and systematic way to ensure that these advanced capabilities are contributing, along with humans, at the highest possible level.
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