Warehouse on-boarding

1.     Warehouse on-boarding

In a cloud environment or a multi warehouse environment, warehouse on boarding activity is a key to the success of the WMS implementation. It consists of multiple steps starting from functionality gap analysis to successful cutover execution.

Steps in a warehouse on-boarding

1.1  System development:

This process involves multiple tasks or activities like gap analysis and product fitment, Design and development of the missing components or functionalities in the system, testing and documenting the test results.

1.2  People alignment:

This process involves training the resources and orienting them into the new WMS product. At times the ways of working gets changed because of the new WMS including the organization structure changes. Aligning the mindset of people for a new change is a challenge in itself.

1.3  Cut over planning and execution:

System is deployed by various techniques like full bang or functionality by functionality. Deployment model varies with the level of maturity the warehousing operation is in a company. Many companies use automated warehouse creation techniques to standardize the warehouse creation procedure and to reduce the time to go live. Warehouse on –boarding itself is a herculean task.

2.     On boarding via automated scripts:

The base warehouse is created based on standard template and new warehouse creation in a multi warehouse environment happens in matter of hours from days or weeks in this model. Standardized operating procedure is needed for this to be successful. Template based solutions are highly utilized in this model and hence the organization achieves and accelerated deployment.

Once the warehouse is created, master data upload happens using scripts and control files. The policies are set in and the needed configuration is made for the system to run in a specific way.

Data take on involves warehouse elements of the WMS like part master, client creation, supplier and customer master upload, Warehouse structure like areas, zones and location master upload.

Data Take-on

3. Cutover planning:

Whether the warehouse operations migrate to newer system at one go or on a phased manner is one of the key decisions taken while cutover planning. In phased cutover, first the new system is used for receiving of good alone where-as the old system is used for shipping of the goods. For a short span of time receiving happens in both the systems in otherwise they run parallel. Beyond a point the outbound operations are also switched to the new WMS application.