Analysts recognizing the value of a 'Manufacturing Aware' Warehouse Management System

publication date: May 26, 2008

Steve Banker, director of supply chain management at ARC Advisory Group, was quoted in a recent article of SDC Exec, "The implementation of a warehouse management system built from a manufacturer's perspective offers a differentiated approach to extend lean initiatives into the warehouse, [supporting processes such as] pull sequencing, Kanban, just-in-time and just-in-sequence [which] are common within best-in-class manufacturers…a platform supporting business processes spanning production and material flows adds a new level of performance improvement, driving further waste from already lean processes." The article also quoted Apriso customer Rustam Sanaev, IT Operations manager at BAT, “Achieving tight integration between production and warehouse operations has provided full traceability for materials and finished goods flows while enabling the highest level of responsiveness to changing demand conditions within our production line and supply chain…The FlexNet platform is vital, facilitating performance improvement within both warehouse and production operations, allowing us to improve our production ability within an increasingly complex operations environment to best serve multiple customer segments.” Strobe has been proselytizing on the benefits of ‘lateral integration’ at the execution layer of the supply chain for longer than we dare admit. It is very reassuring that the analysts and major corporate customers are coming around to that point of view.