FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
Supply chain management (SCM) is the overall range of activities required to plan, control, and execute a product's flow, including processes that take place in the transformation of raw materials into final products. It involves streamlining a business's supply-side activities to maximize customer value, gain competitive advantage and minimize expendatures. SCM covers the planning and execution of processes required to optimize the flow of materials, information and financial capital in the areas that include demand planning, sourcing, production, inventory management and storage, ecommerce, transportation and return for excess or defective products.
Software-as-a-Service (SAAS) is an innovative tier of cloud computing. It is projected to provide lucrative benefits for the supply chain industry.
SaaS systems provide businesses with the ability to offer more efficient services to customers by helping them streamline their data. The main benefits os SaaS for supply chain operations are: Easy to learn, generating high adoption rates; Offers Low initial costs; Upgrade capabilities that remove the unnecessary hassle for adding additional software; Helps businesses scale to meet customer demand.
Constant evaluation and adoption of crucial technologies when it comes to warehouse management is critical in order to improve profitability and stay competitive. Warehouse managers have a wide selection of technologies to choose from as they need to reduce costs, improve efficiency and streamline operations. Companies must ensure that goods, materials and products flow effortlessly by optimizing their warehouse operations through the use of technologies. Some of the latest technologies used today are machine to machine, order fulfillment optimization, pick-to-light, warehouse robotics, and voice tasking
Over the last few years, machine-to-machine technology, or M2M, has greatly evolved into more sophisticated systems that help monitor and streamline all automation aspects of warehouse operations. When combined with warehouse management systems (WMS), the latest M2M systems are making it easier to control all equipment within the warehouse that is vital to the order fulfillment process. This technology helps collect and trade information that provides warehouse managers with actionable information that can verify operational procedures and expedite decisions.
Every warehouse should consider introducing the latest order fulfillment technology in the market. Different warehouse technology solutions are available to help maximize order picking productivity and boost accuracy. There are two main solutions: Pick-by-Light and Put-by-Light. These technologies help automate warehouse processes and offer a more efficient and lower cost solution over manual picking methods.
These systems use specific light displays to direct warehouse operators to product locations. They make it easier for operators to know which to products to pick and how many. These systems are highly flexible, and the technology comes with the ability to plan, control, and analyze volumes of orders picked.
New robotics technology has become one of the most sought after technologies for warehouse management. Leading-edge manufacturers are partnering with providers of warehouse management systems to create customized software and smart robots that help manage the movement, storage, and sorting of warehouse inventory.
This is a hands-free technology that uses spoken commands for picking, putting, receiving, replenishing, and warehouse shipping functions. This technology is almost similar to RF technology and is a flexible choice for order fulfillment.
Companies are continually looking for new ways to improve and optimize their deliveries. To gain competitive edge, companies need to adopt technologies that include smart planning with IoT, faster fulfilment, and automation to remove delivery complexity.
Ditching the traditional transport planning and scheduling based on reducing the distance traveled the world is moving towards the Internet of things. However, urban freight is more focused on time of delivery, reducing the maintenance cost, behavior monitoring, and much more. Modern delivery management solutions are developed using big data to forecast delivery routes, real-time traffic information, and predictive measures of the vehicle. Coming delivery management solutions are smart and intelligent with the capabilities for dynamic planning. The planning buckets will be no longer in minutes, just seconds.