Accelerated Deployments using template solutions

Accelerated Deployments using template solutions

Accelerated deployments are the need of the hour to reduce the time to go live for application deployments including Warehouse Management Systems. It is true that it has several advantages, at the same time some challenges in realizing the mission of having accelerated deployments. Template solutions are designed and developed for enabling them. This article is to elicit how accelerated deployments are designed for Warehouse Management Systems, the advantages and the challenges faced.

Templates are preconfigured applications or solutions along with standardized ways of working and operational manuals. These templates are used to accelerate the time to deploy WMS applications. Generally industry specific templates are designed for WMS. For example template for pharmaceutical industry differs from template for automobile industry as the ways of working and the business process model differs between them. Pharmaceutical products storage and distribution necessitates expiry date control and specific storage conditions to follow stipulated legal norms. Whereas automobile spare parts industry calls for first in first out for accounting reasons and bill of material based picking for light assembly.

Template solution

In a template solution, the application is preconfigured for most of the business process needs. Site specific configurations are done over and above the standardized configurations without altering much the base working model. Interfaces to and from external applications are standardized. Aligning to standards like SCOR model largely helps in standardizing across the applications. Applications are configured to provide standardized MIS reports and dashboards for the management. Operations are to be carried out using predefined standard operating procedures (SOPs).

Template solution based accelerated deployments have several advantages. The time to market or the deployment time is greatly reduced when accelerates are used appropriately. Operations running in multi sites get enforced to follow standard ways of working. As a result centralized control and visibility is greatly enhanced. Convincing about the solution to top managements becomes easier as proven methods are followed and standard procedures are adopted. And these are gained at a reduced total cost of ownership. Because of standardized procedures and template based solution design, application maintenance and support cost reduces substantially. This helps in reducing the total cost of ownership to a large extend. 

Advantages of accelerated deployments

There are some specific challenges in having successful accelerated deployments. Often the process maturity from one site to other site varies greatly. As a result standardizing the operational procedures becomes difficult and sometimes impossible to standardize unless internal and external factors get changed. Standardization calls for action from different parties in the supply chain and not just the company. It is extremely important that suppliers also move to standard ways of working in order to have successful accelerated deployments. The maturity of the suppliers and their technology lag may hamper the mission. At times our own sites may differ in the level of maturity. Some of the warehouses may be run by paper based operation while others have RF based picking and put away operations. The differences in technology advancements tend to become a bottleneck for accelerated deployments.

Despite the challenges, accelerated deployments continue to help the company to reduce the overall total cost of ownership along with gaining process maturity and standardization.