Time for a new approach to Warehouse Management Systems

Smaller warehouses need a WMS too! 

It has always stunned me how Warehouse Management Systems (WMS) and the associated technology has failed to trickle down to medium and smaller businesses in the same way that other software and technology has.

At the high end these systems are quite stunning in their scope and functionality.  Modern WMS have extraordinary control over warehouse operations and have extended their functions further up and down the supply chain to provide control from inbound shipments through to delivery and return from customers.

This is great but where are the low end systems with basic functionality that will provide 80% of the benefit for 20% of the price?  Where are the systems aimed specifically at small to medium warehouses?  Mostly in this space you have higher end systems trying to compete and price more affordably, but they can never get cheap enough and they are too costly and complex to implement.  In addition to this the whole scale and approach of their IT support model adds more cost to the implementation and makes the cost of ownership prohibitive.

As one IT business development professional said to me recently 

"...the lower end of the WMS market is 

under-served."  

Quite a massive understatement from what I can see.  Many quite substantial distribution businesses have still not implemented a WMS and the lower end businesses have to wait too long to get a decent return on their WMS investment and so it gets put in the someday maybe basket (nod to GTD followers).

WMS technology needs to
get more affordable

A new lower cost model for software, hardware and implementation services and support are needed if this technology is going to live up to its potential to radically improve the productivity of the tens of thousands of medium and smaller distribution operations not just in Australia but around the world.

I have decided to stick my neck out and build that low cost WMS implementation model.  I have started my search for software and already have one promising prospect.  Now I am on a mission and you can follow the journey on the Rapid-WMS Blog.  Watch this space!

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