Reddwerks WPM 3.4

• Reduce costs
• Increase accuracy
• Get more from equipment

Warehouse management system (WMS) and warehouse control system (WCS) solutions have not kept pace with business demands during the past 20 years, with no innovation, low product investment, and little focus on the availability of ever-increasing hardware technology choices. In addition to higher costs, the functionality gap between WMS and WCS layers has created inflexible, proprietary, and fragile operation environments that lower warehouse performance, increase corporate risk, and reduce competitive advantage.

Logistics and manufacturing companies must continue to lower costs, provide for demanding service level agreements, and improve accuracy while sustaining internet, corporate, and global growth. Reddwerks provides you true warehouse performance and flexibility.

The Reddwerks Warehouse Performance Management (WPM) solution allows customers to lower costs, increase accuracy, increase transparency, and scale capacity because our WPM solution manages and tasks all the labor and equipment in the warehouse. In addition to these benefits, the Reddwerks WPM platform architecture includes a built-in metrics engine that provides hundreds of real-time metrics across each job function so you can quickly identify performance opportunities.

One equipment interface

Our Universal Equipment Interface (UEI) technology controls and directs order processing workflows and labor independently of the hardware technology used.

The workflow engine communicates through the Universal Equipment Interface to the RF, voice, pick-to-light, carousels, conveyor, A-frame, and ASR equipment to direct workers and equipment to process and route orders in the most efficient manner.

Our UEI layer can even interface directly with vendor-specific hardware protocols if necessary, eliminating the need for multiple software vendors and order processing silos. Our UEI layer is the first in the industry to allow real-time cross technology workflows, tracking, and routing. Customers can choose the equipment that best suits their needs and performance goals.

Waveless order processing

Our order processing engine and workflows use our UEI layer to provide real-time flexibility and transparency. Orders are no longer processed in technology silos, but instead can pass seamlessly between users, areas, and technologies in real-time.

Customers can plan and profile orders, cube based on volume or weight, change order processing plans real-time, create work assignments based on real-time events, task interleave assignments to optimize labor across job functions, handle exceptions and make real-time overrides, and audit orders.

Other order processing modules include

• Order profiling and planning
• Order routing & optimization
• Cubing and multi-start algorithms
• Pick and/or Put
• Stocking
• QC and Auditing
• Packing and pricing
• Palletizing
• Shipping

Labor assignments & task interleaving

Leverage labor for more than one task. Our WPM solution provides a powerful work assignment engine that can create stocking, cycle counting, picking, and QC assignments that can be routed, started, held, and completed by one or multiple workers.

In addition, tasks can cross workflows, such as voice and RF. For example, with picking, an order could start in a slow moving area using RF, be routed to a selection area using Pick-to-Light technology, and finally be routed to a high-value cage using carousels. The entire time the order status, audit, and labor can be viewed and directed through the Reddwerks WPM solution. Our solution removes the bottlenecks and static methodologies created by inflexible WCS and WMS solutions that cannot handle multiple technologies.

Quality control & auditing

Accuracy is a focus throughout the WPM platform. One key differentiator with WPM is the ability to perform quality checks on orders at any point in the order lifecycle. The Reddwerks WPM solution provides open and blind QC options that can be used through our web-based interface or through our mobile RF platform. QC orders in the pick modules, at a divert point, at a pack station, or even on the shipping dock.

Our workflow engines monitor worker, product, and customer attributes and use weigh-in-motion equipment to route specific orders and containers, ones more likely to have issues needing to be corrected, to QC stations. If errors are recorded, the routing and QC engines begin to adjust what orders and containers it chooses to route to QC to ensure labor focuses on the best candidates for issues.

All QC actions and errors are recorded so facilities can quickly identify the types of errors they are seeing, users causing the errors, errors by technology, and the percentage of lines and containers checked.

Real-time analytics

Reddwerks is the first warehouse software solution to bring real-time OLAP data mart reports to the warehouse. Our solution's unique analytic services move data in real-time as orders are picked, reviewed at quality control, packed, and shipped. WPM tracks and records every scan, weight, and button press by person, task, container, line item, technology, work area, and order. The data mart automatically aggregates these metrics in real-time so operations and business users have access to labor, throughput, accuracy, and facility metrics information.

The data mart leverages standard STAR schema methodologies to provide users and IT groups with reporting flexibility through any standard business intelligence (BI) tool including Business Objects, Business Objects Crystal Reports, Cognos ReportNet, and Actuate.

Users can run real-time daily, monthly, and quarterly trending reports without impacting equipment, labor, or warehouse performance. These real-time analytic reports and features make warehouse performance visible to management anytime, anywhere, using our 100% web-based portal.

Flexible integration and security

Save project and IT costs with a single order processing solution for all of your order processing job functions. Our integration framework supports full transaction recovery and auditability through FTP, TCP/IP sockets, XML APIs, web services, IBM MQ, and JMS interfaces.

In addition to the data transport layers, our solution integrates with corporate LDAP systems to provide IT departments with a single security model and eliminates the need to maintain another third-party application user authentication model.

Multiple platforms

Our solution is based on the latest technology standards and supports MS Windows, Unix, AIX, and Linux operating systems, as well as all of the leading database platforms including MS SQL, Oracle, Informix, DB2, MySQL, and MaxDB.

Reddwerks 3.4 WPM represents a significant leap forward for the industry and the warehouse.