“We just spent several millions of dollars on a new Warehouse Management System for our E-Commerce Online Distribution Centre. We do not need to spend any more money on our Supply Chain.” That sounded very intriguing to say the least. At a minimize we needed to optimize storage.
The E-Commerce business anticipated 20-30% year to year growth. I could only interpret, having just joined the company, that all of the steps and planning needed had been taken. We had to ensure that the Distribution Centre could handle Holiday volumes, especially over the Black Friday/Cyber Monday period.
However imagine my surprise when I went to the Online Distribution Centre. All I saw was a very large warehouse with nothing but racks and shelving as far as the eye could see. Employees were pushing carts up and down aisles, across the entire warehouse. They were trying to find each of the products required to fill a particular customer order. The company had just invested in an expensive Warehouse Management System.
Yet no time or money had been spent on process optimization, order fulfillment cycle time reduction, cost reduction, or peak capacity load management.
We were in for a hectic Holiday season, at best!
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