A few months back I posted the first, and probably most significant, reason to put a Warehouse Management System (WMS) in your Manufacturing Operations Management (MOM) system. That reason was: Material Synchronization. While this is the #1 reason, it’s not the only reason. So today I’d like to discuss reason #2: WMS In a Production Environment is Different.

In a Distribution Center or a pure warehouse (to supply retailers, for example) the focus and requirements for a WMS are focused on receiving, internal movements and shipping as shown in Figure 1. So, the focus of most – if not all – pure WMS solutions is around this set of capabilities. There will typically be different picking and put-away methods required, the need for cross-docking, use of RFID and barcodes will be significant critical, and Cycle Counting and/or Physical Inventory may be important depending on the velocity of materials through the warehouse.

In a warehouse that needs to support a Production environment, all of the above requirements exist, but there are also a number of additional unique requirements as shown in Figure 2. For a warehouse to effectively support manufacturing, it must provide multiple supply and line replenishment methods such as kanban, minimum stock levels, kitting for orders, kitting for assembly stations, etc., it must manage buffers on the shop floor based on actual production, it must be able to support sub-assembly areas in support of final assembly, and in many cases packaging materials – especially returnable containers – need to be tracked.

These additional requirements can most effectively be supported with the visibility and material synchronization capabilities that are provided by a WMS that is an inherent part of your MOM solution. Most WMS systems don’t provide the visibility and synchronization required to support these capabilities, and even if you find a WMS that could provide these capabilties, the time, effort and cost required to create and maintain the integration between WMS and MOM that would be required to support his model in real time in a high speed production environment is unsustainable. Having WMS as an inherent part of your MOM solution overcomes these barriers and makes this an effective, sustainable business model to support your manufacturing environment now and in the future as supply chains continue to change.