WES Inside WMS

In recent years, the pace of change for the supply chain has continued to accelerate, adding new pressures and new challenges which require new innovations. The rise of ecommerce and omnichannel fulfilment, combined with labour volatility and cost constraints, has created more pressure on the supply chain than ever before.

And the industry has responded with tremendous growth in the area of advanced automation.

Robot Revolution

The challenge is that different types of automation do not naturally communicate. They are not even aware of each other, much less the supporting workforce. Getting maximum throughput within the distribution centre requires coordinating and orchestrating every single asset to work together - automation, robotics and people.

In any distribution centre setting there are five “natural” resources to manage: orders, inventory, labour, planned work, and automation. Manhattan Active Warehouse Management has orchestrated four of those five with tremendous success over the past 30 years and was recently recognised as a WMS leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for the 12th consecutive time.

Now Manhattan has added automation to deliver complete command and control of the warehouse with the industry’s first WES built into a WMS. It doesn’t matter what kind you have or how much of it you use.

Manhattan has also made it easy to add new automation through the Manhattan Automation Network, made up of industry-leading providers, so you know your new technology will plug right into Manhattan Active Warehouse Management. Together, they create an ecosystem that helps get automation initiatives up and running faster than ever before.

Coordinated Control

Coordination and collaboration across discrete and individual pieces of advanced automation in the warehouse only gets more powerful when those systems are connected to, and aware of, each other.

More than ever, warehouse management must be approached from a perspective that considers any combination of human and automation capacity together. With the combination of native WES and Order Streaming capabilities, Manhattan Active WM is the only solution that enables total visibility across the distribution center, complete flexibility for automation growth, and maximum utilisation of all resources.