Completed WMS projects
Internationally working pharmaceutical enterprise
Detailed information for the comparison of warehouse management systems
Branch
- Pharmaceutical industry
- Chemical industry
The team warehouse logistics was asked by a German business consulting company to assist one of their costumers during the selection of a warehouse management system. The consulting company is mainly active in the field of supply chain management and carried out an analysis on behalf of its customer, a large international pharmaceutical enterprise.
Motive and goal
The pharmaceutical enterprise permanently has to cope with market requirements. In order to meet these requirements and to remain competitive the enterprise continuously scrutinizes its situation to achieve the best possible market position. In the scope of this analysis it also studied its logistic performance, above all the warehouse management system.
This analysis should reveal at an early stage if the existing WMS or the WMS provider fulfill the enterprise's future requirements.
International Market Survey WMS
During the logistic analysis the used warehouse management system (WMS) was studied with regard to current and future functions. Furthermore, the WMS provider was studied with regard to the organisational structure and investment safety.
The pharmaceutical enterprise compared the WMS provider and his system with competing WMS by means of the online WMS selection which is part of the professional version of warehouse-logistics.com. This tool is based on the International Market Survey WMS. The survey gives an extensive overview over the WMS market and contains more than 3 500 single aspects of over 65 WMS providers.
The catalogue was searched for systems which best meet the requirements of the enterprise's longterm logistic concept.
Workshop WMS providers
In addition to the functions of the individual WMS the pharmaceutical enterprise wanted to gather information about the WMS provider.
For this reason, the selected WMS providers were put "to the acid test" during a one-day workshop. The functions of the WMS were compared and their strong and weak points were pointed out. The providers were compared with regard to the number of employees, references, products and services, know-how, owner and company structure (marketing, development, support). Further aspects were, among others, conception, realisation, integration, training, support, daily operation or further development of standard and customized modules as well as subjects like "From standards to customer solutions"(use of standardized modules, programming, parameterization, flexibility of solutions regarding ERP interfaces, process representation and picking methods) and "Scenario of a system integration" (project runtime, technical realisation with "online" system exchange, cost types and order of magnitudes).
The goal of this analysis was to gather information about the WMS providers and their systems. This should assure that the WMS meets the current function requirements as well as future requirements regarding the information flow.
Result
In cooperation with the business consultants and the pharmaceutical enterprise the team warehouse logistics prepared a list of suitable WMS providers showing the functions of the WMS, the experience and qualifications of the staff as well as a description of how the providers implement their WMS. In other words, there has to be "a good chemistry" between the pharmaceutical enterprise and the listed WMS providers.
