Managing apparel warehouses

David Cullis

Retailing is on the verge of its biggest revolution in decades. As this revolution unfolds, supply chain management is poised to assume a critical new importance to ensure the right stock shows up when and where its needed. The old marketing lesson of the four P's - Product, Price, Place and Promotion - has been replaced with a new paradigm, the four C's - Consumer, Cost, Convenience and Communication.

Managing apparel products (garments, footwear, accessories and soft furnishings) is particularly problematical, given the various SKU (Stock Keeping Unit) variations involving colour, size, style, length and drop. These product complexities provide additional challenges in synchronising replenishment with consumer demand. Given that increasing volumes of apparel products are now being manufactured offshore for labour cost reasons, specialist Apparel Warehouse Management Systems (WMS) have already become a key factor in providing suppliers and their distribution partners with competitive advantage.

Three parties in the logistics mix must work closely together to enable quick response to demand, namely the retailer, the apparel supplier and in an increasing number of cases, a third party logistics provider (3PL). This company would typically handle the warehousing and physical distribution requirements of a number of apparel suppliers, retailers and companies sourcing corporate or workwear.

The apparel WMS must obviously facilitate receiving, managing, picking and shipping product quickly and accurately. However, the system must also be capable of exchanging information covering these operations electronically with the retailer or corporate customer (via EDI or the Internet) to enable tracking in transit and rapid deployment at the receiving end of the chain. Effective warehouse management is therefore crucial to enable quick and accurate response to replenishment orders and 'call-offs' from retailers to accurately record and optimally put away stock coming in, to minimise time required to subsequently locate, pick and despatch and to optimise use of expensive warehouse space. Effective warehouse management is therefore a strategic customer service and cost reduction issue.

Xe-WMS XeBusiness markets a 'best of breed' WMS specifically developed for small to medium sized apparel warehouses and featuring 'state-of-the-art' barcoded scanning (including RF -Radio Frequency) and eCommerce/EDI functionality.

The author is MD of XeBusiness