REDWOOD SHORES, Calif.¡ªCompiere, a provider of open source business applications, recently announced it has rolled out what it claims is the first open source warehouse management system (WMS).
The company said in a statement that the new application¡ªCompiere Warehouse Management¡ªprovides shippers with the ability to increase visibility into warehouse operations, reduce costs and augment customer satisfaction by automating inbound and outbound logistics processes within warehouses.
Compiere developed Compiere Warehouse Management in conjunction with Specsavers Optical Group, an eyewear retailer in Europe and Australasia. Specsavers already was a user of Compiere¡¯s open source ERP application for various processes, including accounting, purchasing, sales, and materials management, among others. It has been using Compiere Warehouse Management for about a year.
Michel Khan, Specsavers CIO, told LM that the Compiere ERP application includes a basic warehousing and distribution structure for inventory management and basic warehouse management processes. Specsavers deploys this ERP¡ªand now its WMS, too¡ªat two operating hubs in the Asia-Pacific and Nordic regions.
¡°Our need for a more sophisticated WMS is born out from the fact that we already operate some sophisticated, large-scale warehouse management solutions in our UK operation,¡± said Khan. ¡°We were looking to see how we could get the same level of functionality from Compiere.¡±
Khan said Specsavers is now using a ¡°basic¡± version of Compiere Warehouse Management and has not yet rolled out what he said is a more sophisticated version that will be rolled out next year, which is currently being tested.
A lot of the benefits of Compiere Warehouse Management, noted Khan, have to do the managing, mapping, and location of SKU¡¯s in warehouses, optimizing traffic flow which improves picking volumes, and the ability to how Specsavers manages the combination of bulk and pick spaces.
Compiere CMO John Cingari told LM that Compiere Warehouse Management also provides customers with other functions, including: directed putaway, picking, and management capabilities via a customizable rules engine. And it also supports wave planning that simulates and recommends the most efficient picking process to satisfy customer demand, according to a company statement.
From a competitive standpoint, Cingari said that an open source WMS provides customers with a cost-savings advantage and from a software supplier perspective, other reasons why the open source ERP world is so attractive: lower costs; a subscription rather than a license which is required by large ERP shops; and the notion of flexibility so the application can be specifically customized based on a customer¡¯s needs.
When asked what attracted Specsavers to an open source ERP platform, Khan said the company was looking for a product that would allow it to function as an economic model of deployment around the world.
¡°As we grow, we are acquiring companies and establishing hubs,¡± said Khan. ¡°And our ability to do that quickly¡and economically are key. Other factors are from technical point of view, in terms of consistency with our infrastructure and architecture and also leveraging skills we have in house that allow us to customize things as we need to and arrive at a product for our business with a fundamental Compiere core that we can upgrade and redeploy.¡±
