Halloween is right around the corner, and to celebrate, EVS has identified the top five warehouse monsters that can terrorize every warehouse and frighten even the most experienced supply chain executives to the core. Many of these monsters have been around for some time, but others were created by new problems facing the warehouse in the 21st century.
WMS Frankenstein
When the IT department brings its aging WMS back from the dead, WMS Frankenstein is born. Lightning strikes and WMS Frankenstein, with its added bolt-on modules, clunky customizations and one-off features, rises from the table, growls a few unintelligible words and then stumbles off into the warehouse. What they didn’t expect was to create a monster—a warehouse management system that’s been tweaked and jerry-rigged to a point where there’s no upgrade path—forcing their business to revolve around its dead-end logic. Frankenstein WMS is so static and stuck in its ways that no new system features can be added or upgrades realized and is completely unable to integrate with a new ERP. It’s only a matter of time until the rest of the company comes running with pitchforks and torches and begs IT for a new WMS that does the job right.
Count Warehouseula
Thirsty for inefficiency, Count Warehouseula WMS sucks the productivity out of any warehouse through poorly designed menus, layers of key stroke navigation and an abyss of warehouse data that will never see sunlight again. After a decade of rooting itself into warehouse operations and IT, Count Warehouseula survives by hiding in the darkness. The only way to vanquish Count Warehouseula is to bring it out from the dark and into the light of a WMS armed with data analytics, artificial intelligence and warehouse simulation.
The Warehouse Walking Dead
After years of following the same processes and upholding operational status quo, the Warehouse Walking Dead have developed a taste for warehouse worker brains. This leaves the leadership blind to what is actually happening within their warehouse. Warehouse Walking Dead have no appetite for artificial intelligence, and a WMS with AI is at no risk of being harmed. In fact, exposure to a WMS with AI is the only way to prevail.
The Mummy of King Bricktunscanner II
After (seemingly) centuries in power, many hoped that King Bricktunscanner II—the monarch of clunky inventory management hardware—had passed on, but unfortunately the king continues to live on in its mummy appliance form. The Mummy of King Bricktunscanner II continues to terrorize warehouses by demanding most of their royalties to pay for outdated technology and repairs while stifling their productivity with its ancient design. The kingdom yearns for a new hardware commander that is both powerful, intuitive and inexpensive, such as an iOS device.
Ghost Inventory
You seem to see inventory in the warehouse. It’s in your peripheral when you drive by, and you can feel that it’s there. But when you go to look for it, it’s gone. That’s Ghost Inventory up to its ghastly tricks again. A seemingly small, almost friendly warehouse ghoul, Ghost Inventory is more trouble than most things. More than just jamming up cash flow, Ghost Inventory can be the costliest warehouse monster of all because it hurts the customer experience and the warehouse’s ability to hold up its end of the bargain. Ghost Inventory is usually found in warehouses with no WMS system. Ghost Inventory is never seen in warehouses that have robust inventory tracking within the warehouse and individual worker accountability.
