Modern manufacturing has brought warehouses increasingly into the manufacturing process. According to Logistics Management, Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES) and Warehouse Management Systems (WMS) are coming together. LeanDNA is mentioned as one of the new technologies driving the charge. Read the highlights below or read the full article on Logistics Management.
- In the past, companies ran factory floors with one software system and their warehouses with another, but today's warehouses are taking on more manufacturing responsibilities.
- Many manufacturers aren’t doing extended production runs where they produce thousands of the same product. The trend is toward smaller, more frequent WIP replenishment.
- JIT (just-in-time) movement of materials can reduce WIP inventory space on the factory floor by up to 95%
- One of the balancing acts in lean manufacturing is having the right inventory levels. But it's critical to find ways to reduce inventory without allowing customer delivery commitments to suffer.
- “There is always some tension with inventory strategy and policies,” says Richard Lebovitz, CEO of LeanDNA. “If you want to improve delivery, you generally will carry more inventory, but that can be wasteful. On the other hand, if you cut inventory without knowing how it’s being used, you create shortages. But if you have good analytics on how it’s being used, you can use less inventory and achieve better performance.”
- Zodiac Aerospace's Vice President of Supply Chain credits LeanDNA's purpose-built analytics structure with allowing the organization to easily identify inventory opportunities at individual sites while quickly determining best practices that could be implemented across the entire division of more than 100 buyers and 500 suppliers, resulting in every site achieving on-time delivery metrics above 90%.
- The future of WMS and MES relies heavily on smart technologies, like robotics, artificial intelligence (AI)
