Boost warehouse efficiency and agility with Openbravo WMS

Supply chains have become more complex in recent years and many retailers have discovered that their warehouse operations are the weak link in the chain. Legacy warehouse management systems (WMS) struggle to cope with the new demands and fail to give retailers the agility and responsiveness they need.

That is particularly true if the WMS is separate from their other business systems or uses batch updates to interact with other systems, as that often leads to inaccurate information, inefficiencies and higher costs.

The recent COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the importance of having a modern WMS that is tightly integrated with the rest of the business.

During the pandemic, demand patterns changed, delivery times lengthened and warehouses filled with stock that could not be sold. Retailers were forced to temporarily reduce the number of SKUs in their assortments or prioritize some lines over others.

These strains rippled through the supply chain and were felt hard in warehouse operations, particularly those with inefficient manual-intensive processes, which were impacted heavily by social distancing and staff shortages.

Retail supply chains are slowly returning to normal and one of the lessons retailers have learnt from the pandemic is the need for a WMS that is well connected with the rest of the business so that it can adapt to changing conditions.

For example, if a product line suddenly becomes very popular in your stores –maybe it gets promoted by a social media “influencer” or perhaps the weather changes – that inventory needs to be stored where it can be accessed most quickly, which may require relocating slow-moving items to a different part of the warehouse.

Openbravo WMS

Openbravo developed Openbravo WMS specifically for retailers that need to address the challenges of optimizing their warehouse operations in today’s uncertain and fast-changing retail environment.

Openbravo WMS is a complete cloud-based solution for managing daily warehouse and inventory operations. It is tightly integrated within the Openbravo Commerce Cloud platform and can also be integrated with third-party retail and ERP systems thanks to its open APIs.

It allows retailers to optimize the use of physical space, human resources and inventory movements with the physical modeling of the warehouse and the application of business rules.

For example, picking rules can be implemented to support simultaneous picking of different orders, batched wave picking for bulk processing of multiple orders, and cross-docking.

Employee productivity is increased using mobile devices for assigning and executing tasks, and the system optimizes the reception and order preparation processes.

Good inventory visibility is key to a successful omnichannel retail strategy, so Openbravo OMS automatically updates inventory information as warehouse tasks are processed, thus giving retailers a centralized, real-time view of their inventory levels.