Blue Harbors has been following the development of mobile EWM applications with interest.
In addition to the mobile warehouse functions using RF for mobile devices that come standard with SAP EWM, we’re also seeing opportunities for some interesting solutions to be developed.
EWM functionality can be enabled across a wide array of mobile devices – including wireless scanners and printers, to iPads and wireless phones, to provide a lot of flexibility in the way that you implement solutions in the warehouse to streamline and improve warehouse efficiency.
With the advent of the HANA Cloud Platform, the functionality of SAP EWM can be extended to include numerous processes and devices through application development in Fiori. These applications can be published on the HANA Cloud Platform. As more companies make the transition to SAP S/4 HANA, we expect more applications to become available, including some solutions of our own.
5 Benefits of Mobile EWM Applications
SAP EWM’s RF framework supports both GUI and character-based devices, as well as browser-based devices. That means mobile EWM applications can be used with nearly any RF-enabled mobile device you might choose, from hardened iPads and mobile phones, to more traditional mobile devices and scanners intended for industrial purposes.
In addition, the analytics and reporting capabilities in SAP EWM, such as the Warehouse Management Monitor with Warehouse Cockpit option, allow you to monitor, analyze and streamline warehouse operations in real time, from any device.
Blue Harbors is currently working on mobile EWM applications to help our clients extend the reach of their SAP EWM solutions.
The benefits of using mobile EWM applications in the warehouse include:
- More Streamlined Movements – Mobile devices work with SAP EWM to assist with streamlining, tracking and communicating movements, and executing warehouse processes. SAP EWM allows you to create a map of the warehouse, which will guide your workers to move throughout the warehouse in the most efficient manner. Combining this with mobile devices means workers can process and execute transactions on the move, rather than having to move themselves and the items in question to a central location to perform tasks.
- Real-Time Inventory Visibility – with SAP EWM and a mobile device, you can get immediate visibility into your inventory as it is received and putaway, right at the dock as it enters your facility. Shipments are instantly processed, as they are scanned into the system using a mobile device. Blue Harbors is currently developing an app that will make this process even easier, more exact and much faster – with real-time updates so that inventory is always accurate.
- Safer Work Environment – Combining the use of SAP EWM with mobile devices can help to provide a safer work environment by allowing for hands-free execution of tasks and more streamlined movements, reducing risk of accidents.
- Better Customer Service – more streamlined picking and packing processes in the warehouse allow workers to fulfill orders more quickly, which means fewer missed shipments and happier customers. Better control of inventory means fewer stock outages and more opportunities to do business.
- Reduced Labor Costs – more efficient work management and routing within the warehouse allows you to reduce redundant effort, multiple trips and ultimately reduces the amount of labor it takes to move the same amount of product.
6 Ways Mobile EWM Applications Can Improve Warehouse Efficiency
The applications for using mobile devices in the warehouse are nearly unlimited, so we can expect to see many applications developed in this area. Any time people and products are moving around your warehouse, there is an opportunity to take those processes mobile so that their movements can be tracked, analyzed and streamlined.
Let’s look at a few of the ways SAP’s mobile EWM applications combine with the use of mobile devices help to improve efficiency in a typical warehouse:
Receiving – SAP EWM’s Goods Receipt integrates with mobile devices, allowing shipments to be instantly scanned and verified against purchase orders as it enters the warehouse, ensuring that inventory in the system is always current.
Putaway – With EWM’s wave management and system-controlled routing, directions of where to putaway can be automatically sent to the worker’s mobile device, ensuring the most efficient route is used.
Replenishment – with SAP EWM mobile applications, requests for replenishment can be handled instantaneously, and again with system-controlled routing the most efficient path of travel will be used to perform the task. Multiple replenishment strategies are supported.
Picking –SAP EWM’s mobile applications can bring real-time integration of multiple device types – mobile radio frequency, pick-by-voice, RFID – to the picking process. Use of EWM with these mobile devices allows workers to receive voice picking instructions, and respond to them by voice or keypad.
Packaging – SAP EWM mobile applications enable instant order validation, and the applications also allow the system to send the correct packaging instructions to the device – ensuring the correct items are used and allowing inventory of the packaging materials themselves to be updated in real time.
Shipping – SAP EWM mobile applications allow workers to use their wireless devices along with a wireless printer to process items for shipment from any location in the warehouse; so when large shipments are being sent and the shipping dock is crowded, you can continue to process orders.
This is just a brief overview of how SAP EWM can work with mobile devices and applications to improve efficiency in the warehouse, and some of the work we are doing in this area. Best of all, beyond the core mobile functionality that is included natively in EWM, there are additional mobile applications, such as SAP Mobile Documents, to choose from in the SAP Store that will allow you to extend mobile into even more business processes.
Are you using mobile devices with EWM in your warehouse? What benefits have you seen? Tell us in the comments.