The Role of ERP in Warehouse Layout Planning

For every business, it is important to evolve their methodologies for more refined and streamlined operations as industries change. Every business owner should get themselves well-prepared for profitable success by putting in place ERP software. It will keep them well-organized and more focused on growing their business. 

Deploy a fully-integrated management software to keep your operations running efficiently and smoothly. It will not only provide you a deep insight into your business processes but also helps you in understanding your business assets such as materials, staffing, and revenue, etc. The best ERP software is the one that’s scalable and grows with your business growth and keeps you ahead of the fierce market competition.  

All the companies, of any nature and size across all industries, are made up of different structures/modules that largely contribute towards the primary goals of addressing the end consumer’s demands (and, meeting their expectations) and generate the targeted revenue. To do this, the majority of the companies are replacing their legacy systems with ERP software solutions that merge different facets of their business together and integrate functions and make them accessible from anywhere (upon authorized permission from concerned personnel – company’s top management).

Not only this, with an ERP system that now comes with advanced, new-age geographical tools that can assist companies in creating virtual warehouses. As a business management system, enterprise resource planning software provides intelligent adapting processes and multiple options that enable the companies to manage and monitor their business operations from one single source.      

Warehouse layout planning using an ERP software:   

Establishing a virtual warehouse is an incredible technique that facilitates all business activities a company is indulged in. Simply put, it’s a detailed replica of a physical warehouse model that extensively helps in your business planning and performing certain functions specifically related to material handling and inventory management.      

Several warehousing development and management strategies are attached to the company's policies. Every business is unique and therefore each company has its own objectives that need to be kept under consideration while deciding on a specific warehouse design layout. These objectives can be defined at two levels; macro and micro. 

On a macro level, a company’s objective could be reducing the warehousing expense or increasing customer satisfaction. The micro-level objectives as the name implies entail more detailed and definite things that could be increasing warehouse productivity with all the tangible and intangible resources remaining constant or maximizing the storage space. So, while planning for a specific warehouse layout, you should keep in mind all the objectives – from macro to micro-level) you intend to accomplish certain tasks.  

In addition, your storage facility’s layout also depends on the workflow and an ERP solution helps you streamline that flow. It means you need all your data to be managed and monitored from a central web system.

Moreover, a manufacturing ERP can help you create a fully customized warehouse layout specific to your planned way of stocking the raw and finished goods. Now, this includes everything from segregating items into racks to material handling, equipment and all other warehouse assets.   

What Else?

An ERP solution can also help you in the proficient stock management provided that a specific space is allocated for a particular set of items in the racking.    

In the business world, planning your warehouse design layout virtually with the help of ERP is a technological revolution. It will surely give you an edge over your competitions. In today’s digitally transformed and globalized environment big organizations have already adopted this new way of handling their goods using a virtual warehouse layout. 

Things to consider in flawless warehouse layout planning.

There are several factors that can affect the overall performance of your warehouse and certainly the design layout takes the lead. Well, for warehouse layout planning, you must keep in mind the following.  

First is to develop a comprehensive implementation plan that can help you steadily when creating the layout. The second essential thing is collecting all necessary information about your warehouses’ specific theme and proposition and how external features can affect items’ stocking, rack arrangement, logistics and other processes. Third is the detailed analysis of your defined objectives and how to carry out them.

As soon as you have gone through all whole preliminary processes of your warehouse layout planning, ERP will aid you extensively from there onward. With an ERP software you can seamlessly convert your thoughts into actions.         

ERP deployment consideration for enhanced warehouse management

An ERP solution not only aids in warehouse layout planning, but also in managing your warehouse. Thanks to its capability of integrating multiple functions and making everything available from once central point.

The ultimate goal of every business is to serve the customers efficiently and ERP is the best possible solution for this. For the reason that it brings different facets of an organization together, including (but not limited to) material procurement, manufacturing, accounting, project management, human resource and product development.    

If companies keep depending on legacy systems and don’t switch their operations to modern ERP solutions, they would face operational inefficiency that will increase the overall cost of business processes. Your business activities require great attention to be executed seamlessly. This is where you need a dynamic enterprise resource planning software that stores real-time data with accuracy from various departments into a single database. This central hub can easily be accessed to work on the available data and hence make well-informed decisions like what sort of warehouse layout can best fit your storage needs. 

Summing up, you should use a modern ERP software solution to make your work easier through process automation and make your warehouse layout planning and implementation smoother and less costly.