Justifying a WMS software upgrade is pretty tough!

 

Watching who upgrades their WMS, I can say, “Don’t do it for productivity gains.”  It is one thing to have code that is old and another to have to buy hardware on eBay or from antique shops, but upgrading because of operational savings should be viewed with disdain.  Simply put, new WMSs don’t seem to have that killer feature that makes upgrading worthwhile.  (Bear in mind that this boy still runs an iPhone5.)

There is no feature like improved case picking – WMSs still try to take the shortest path ignoring many of the niceties of stacking, and fail to maximize the cube and minimize damage. There is no optimized scheduling of docks or process of arranging, controlling, and optimizing work and workloads.  Maybe that is a good thing – because we make the bolt-ons to make WMS work better.  

 

Oil supply is down – but so is demand.  As the price of oil has increased, India and China have slowed buying for their strategic reserves. (Basic economic theory works!)