techwatch

FOR LOGISTICS MANAGERS FACING NEVER-ENDING PRESSURE to find distribution efficiencies, one solution could be software that can provide insights into their operations. That’s why when it comes to buying execution software for warehousing or transportation, these managers should make it a point to look for packages that offer analytics.

Most of the better-known warehouse management systems (WMS) and transportation management systems (TMS) now come with some form of analytics. Even the transportation and warehouse software offerings from the big enterprise resource planning (ERP) vendors provide this type of intelligence these days.

Right now, the type of analytics most commonly offered is what’s known as descriptive reporting. In other words, it details what happened in the past. “Virtually all WMS and TMS have this capability to one degree or another,” says Gartner analyst C. Dwight Klappich.

But descriptive analytics are just the jumping-off
point for software intelligence. Software vendors
are working on analytics that can prescribe courses
of action and even offer predictions as to where
things are headed. Despite the work being done in
those areas, Klappich says WMS software is still
limited in that regard. “We do see some vendors
like Manhattan investing more in this around areas like labor and
resource planning, trying to identify future problems before they
occur. For example, they might be looking at the work for the day and
identifying the need for more people in receiving or value-added
services to prevent a bottleneck in one process area or another.”
Klappich says vendors are also working on analytics that predict the
level of labor resources required to address workflow spikes, such as
those that occur during the back-to-school or pre-holiday shopping sea-
sons. Software development is not just focused on labor, though.
Predictive analytics could also be used to help users reconfigure their
distribution operations to optimize throughput. “I believe this will be
one of the major areas of innovation in WMS over the next several
years,” says the Gartner analyst. “We will begin to see adoption of con-
straint-based optimization concepts, long used in manufacturing, in
warehousing, but clearly, it will be a different application of the concepts
[tailored to] the unique needs of warehousing.”
At the moment, transportation management
systems are ahead of their WMS counterparts
when it comes to robust prescriptive analytics.
“Transportation has long had some prescriptive
analytics because most were built on an opti-
mization foundation,” says Klappich. “Systems
were good at operational planning within the
delivery time horizon, but what we see now is
more of a focus on tactical
planning outside the execution
time horizon.”
In addition to making rec-
ommendations for improve-
ments—say, suggesting the use
of an alternative carrier to cut
costs or improve service—
Given that so many WMS and TMS packages
now come with built-in analytics, logistics man-
agers should consider taking advantage of those
features. After all, analytics just might provide
some critical insights into how to save dollars in
distribution or transportation. ;