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The extreme popularity of eCommerce is good news for those in the retail, commerce, manufacturing, and wholesale distribution industries. It’s also good news for the warehousing businesses that fulfill trillions of dollars in online orders. The high, and ever increasing, demand for their services requires a modern warehouse management system, like Acumatica WMS, to manage their dynamic needs.
About Acumatica WMS
A warehouse management system helps companies with inventory and supply chain fulfillment requirements. Its superpowers are automating companies’ fulfillment processes and optimizing how they use their labor, space, and equipment in the new digital economy. However, warehouse management systems are often standalone entities. Because a WMS interacts with every aspect of a business (e.g., purchasing, sales, inventory, accounting, etc.), its functions will be enhanced if it can share information back and forth with an ERP solution—a centralized system that collects, stores, and organizes business data across an entire organization.
Unfortunately, data sharing between these separate systems is not always smooth. For example, data may be duplicated or missed as it transfers from one system to the next. There’s also the frustration of waiting for information to synchronize. An integrated WMS and ERP solution eliminates the need for data synchronization and allows for seamless, real-time, 24-7 communication.
Acumatica’s manufacturing, distribution, and commerce customers wanted and needed this functionality, so Acumatica responded with Acumatica WMS. It integrates with and extends Acumatica’s Distribution Management software. Together, they enhance distribution, increase productivity, integrate with inventory management, and improve the customer experience in today’s omnichannel and eCommerce sales environment.
Here’s how. Acumatica WMS:
- Reduces errors and improves customer satisfaction through barcode scanning and verification of picked items.
- Automates routine picking, packaging, PO receiving, putting away, transferring, and physical counting tasks.
- Scans serial and lot numbers and prints on pick lists to eliminate mistakes in shipping.
- Interacts with mobile devices through barcode scanning.
Now, Acumatica has added another feature to Acumatica WMS, which will further elevate its manufacturing and distribution capabilities: directed paperless picking.
Acumatica WMS launches directed paperless picking in Acumatica 2021 R2
Acumatica is committed to building high quality, affordable products based on each industry’s unique needs and processes. Our latest release, Acumatica 2021 R2, is the result of customer and partner feedback. The Acumatica Community requested increased warehouse picking efficiency, and, thus, directed paperless picking was born.
Before examining this new and exciting feature, let’s look at why there was a need for it in the first place. Many pickers (skilled employees who pull ordered items from warehouse racking or storage to be shipped) currently print their pick lists on paper. Picking while holding both the paper and a scanning device is obviously doable (e.g., set the list down, tape it to a cart, etc.), but it’s an extra step that adds time and inconvenience. It’s also hard to manually track where you are on long lists, which can lead to errors.
Paper-based systems lack the information warehouse managers need to economize and automate their processes. Managing the order and priority of picking lists in this way is inefficient and ineffective.
With Acumatica’s directed paperless picking, warehouse managers can prioritize pick lists and choose who will pick which list when through a Manage Picking Queue Screen. For example, walking from location to location within a large warehouse is time consuming (and physically tiring). With directed paperless picking, pickers can be assigned to items in one section of the warehouse, eliminating the back-and-forth.
The system can also be set to fulfill orders via wave or batch picking.
In wave picking, the warehouse manager chooses the number of pickers and the number of items to be picked. Then, each picker receives a consolidated item list, picks them in one pass through the warehouse—collecting and organizing them into totes assigned to each shipment—and brings them to the packer. The packer verifies that the items match the shipment list and then packs the items into shipping boxes.
As with wave picking, in batch picking the picker works from lists that generally include items from multiple sales orders. They collect those items from the warehouse but do not sort them. After picking, they bring the items to a designated sorting location. There, a pack line operator prints a packing slip for each shipment and gives the slips to the packer, who sorts and packs the items.
Whichever picking type is used, Acumatica’s new Picking Queue Screen shows open picking jobs based on priority and status. This information is designed to be made visible on a big screen in the warehouse, so every employee can see, in real time, who is assigned to which list, what the priority level is for each list, and what time the assigned picker started/ended the picking process.
Finally, the directed paperless picking feature allows Pick, Pack, and Ship to operate in paperless mode; the amount of paper warehouses use for pick lists (and paper accounts for about 26% of landfill waste) can be reduced significantly with the automation capabilities of Acumatica WMS.
Ready to Automate Your Warehouse Operations?
Acumatica WMS seamlessly integrates with Acumatica’s Distribution Management system, Inventory Management software, and Order Management software. It’s a comprehensive solution for your manufacturing and distribution needs, and directed paperless picking is another feature designed to increase your efficiency and profitability.
The video below provides a great overview of Acumatica’s warehouse management system.
The Acumatica Summit 2021 Day Two Keynote contains a live distribution and retail-eCommerce demonstration, which can show you the benefits of an integrated WMS and ERP solution.
If you have any questions, please contact our team today.
