IMI Warehouse Management

IMI Warehouse is a world-class warehouse management system (WMS) that plans, controls, monitors and follows up all of the physical processes for the manufacturing or distribution-oriented warehouse or distribution center. It performs all tasks in real-time 24x7x365 and adapts quickly to resource constraints and priorities and coordinates interdependent warehouse and transportation activities.

IMI Warehouse is highly configurable and supports advanced warehouse operations, ranging from central warehouses to cross-dock and return centers. With the following key capabilities, you can fulfill the quality, delivery, and vendor managed inventory (VMI) demands of your customers, while squeezing the costs out of your distribution process.

Inbound Handling: IMI Warehouse offers an efficient inbound operation and supports a high degree of specialization. Planning starts with the pre-registration of vehicles and purchase order or Advance Ship Notice (ASN) information. Received goods are validated, evaluated for optimal utilization, placed on a ‘load carrier’ (i.e. pallet, tote) and directed to a put-away location. Inbound handling is highly flexible enabling multiple combinations of items and load carriers, quality control and audit trails for tracking and reporting purposes and extensive usage of product characteristics for directed put-away (i.e. lot, QC).

Pick Management: IMI Warehouse handles many types of customer orders and picks. One order can have order lines with delivery to many different customers or warehouses. Pick order is optimized by customer, package, line, weight, volume, time and location. This flexibility enables cost effective picking of small quantities or many different products. The right resources are automatically assigned to manage the picking and to minimize movements. Pick orders are fetched through traditional picking tickets or RF devices. Serial number, lot handling, expiration date handling and catch measure are supported.

Cross-docking: IMI Warehouse has the ability to execute planned cross-docking for pre-destined transit containers, as well as opportunistic cross-docking where outbound pick needs are matched with inbound quantities. In both cases, received products are directed from inbound to outbound, eliminating the two most expensive warehousing tasks: put-away and storage handling.

Kitting and Light Assembly: IMI Warehouse supports postponement of assembly operations to push to product customization closer to the final customer delivery time. Rapid assembly is for kit product that can be assembled during picking. Substantial assembly is where kit components are first picked and then assembled at a pre-defined location.

Ship Management: Departure handling helps define fixed transportation schedules by warehouse, day, and method of shipments. Departures specify departing weekday, dispatch route, shipment method, departure time, order entry stop-time, special transport requirement, transport time, and constraints. Multiple departures between nodes with different shipment methods and freight consolidation handling are supported.

Reverse Logistics: IMI Warehouse includes reverse logistics support with integrated processes for sellable products, load carriers and packing materials including full functionality for:

• Receiving goods from customer/other warehouse
• Inspecting and refining returned goods
• Returning goods to vendor / other warehouse
• Transit returned goods through a warehouse

Logistics Services Providers: IMI Warehouse has been designed to manage both third and fourth party logistics situations. The 3PL/4PL provider will manage and distribute the products and inventory on behalf of their clients. Products, vendors, customers, codes, etc. are part of the client private data space. All inventories in the warehouse belong to one or ore owners. An owner can be an ma department within the business.

Production Monitoring: IMI Warehouse includes a set of monitoring screens that indicate if there is an imbalance between allocated resources and workload, or if tasks are correctly prioritized. The philosophy is to provide a quick overview on a few queues and tasks. Efficient monitoring makes the difference between reasonable and excellent operational performance.

System Interaction: Several software and hardware systems can be simultaneously linked to IMI Warehouse from ERP, order management and supply chain planning solutions to material handling equipment and slotting tools.