Warehouse management is the art of movement and storage of materials throughout the warehouse. Warehouse management monitors the progress of products through the warehouse. It involves the physical warehouse infrastructure, tracking systems, and communication between product stations. Warehouse management deals with receipt, storage and movement of goods usually finished goods and includes functions like warehouse master record, item/ warehouse cross-reference lists and such things as on hand, allocated, transfers in process, transfer in process, transfer lead time, safety stock, fields for accumulating statistics by location.

A warehouse manager needs to perform several crucial functions such as overseeing and recording deliveries and pickups, loading and unloading materials and supplies, maintaining inventory records and tracking system, determining appropriate places for storage, rotating stock as needed and adjusting inventory levels to reflect receipts and disbursements. An individual handling the warehouse management needs to have knowledge about inventory control and warehousing systems, loading and unloading procedures, risky and materials storage and mathematical knowledge.

A warehouse management system is a critical component of an effective overall supply chain management systems solution. Warehouse management system began as a system to control movement and storage of materials within a warehouse. Today it even incorporates tasks such as light manufacturing, transportation management, order management, and entire accounting systems.

Implementation of Warehouse Management System (WMS) will provide you an increase in accuracy, reduction in labor costs if the labor employed to maintain the system is less than the labor saved on the warehouse floor and a greater ability to service the customer by reducing cycle times. WMS may not serve you with inventory reduction and greater storage capacity. An increase in accuracy and efficiency receiving process might lead to reduction in level of safety stock required. But the consequence of this reduction will hardly be visible to the overall inventory levels. WMS might just not affect the factors (lot sizing, lead times and demand variability) controlling the inventory levels. However WMS is instrumental in more efficient and organized that leads to increased storage capacity.

Lately in the field of warehouse management, Infor, the largest global enterprise software provider is developing solutions for the manufacturing and distribution industries. Infor’s management technology is meant for enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. Infor technology can be used for single as well as multiple warehouses. It allows manufacturers and distributors to perceive and monitor the location of particular items within the facility. The technology is also extremely beneficial in ascertaining the size and weight of incoming shipments to set up the perfect way to transport and place them in the warehouse. The professional experts at Infor are planning to integrate it into Infor’s Microsoft.Net based ERP system for manufacturers.