The first AI applications in WMS are now emerging. Instead of building reports, you can simply ask a chatbot: which pick aisle was busiest today? Or: where did wait times occur during replenishment?

AI can also make warehouse control smarter. Think of intelligent choices for storage locations or better work distribution between pickers. Interesting applications, but these aren’t the real gamechangers yet.

I’ve been at the forefront of the WMS market for 30 years now. What frustrates me is that WMS implementations haven’t become simpler after all those years. A typical project still requires about 200 days of supplier effort.

I often experience WMS implementations as surreal exercises. Your current and desired processes go into a blender with the WMS configuration and the creativity of the WMS consultant. A blueprint comes out that then goes through a cycle of prototypes, testing, discussion, configuration, building, retesting, and rebuilding — until a working system emerges.

That brings me to my second frustration. Standard packages have limitations. If your process doesn’t fit exactly into the package, you have to choose: adapt the process or build customization. Customization makes maintenance more complex and upgrades riskier, and if we’re honest, process adaptation is often not an option either.

AI Changes Everything

AI technology can fundamentally change this. How nice would it be if, instead of tedious workshops and long iterations, you could go directly to a chatbot that understands all aspects of the WMS? You describe what your warehouse looks like and how you want to work, and the bot configures the WMS before your eyes. Want to change something afterward? No problem either. Then it should finally be possible to complete implementations in significantly less than 200 days.

Moreover, AI makes it much easier to program yourself. Things that are now built as customizations in the WMS can soon be easily added as separate apps. Need a specific screen for receiving hazardous goods or a handy algorithm for order batching? Build your own apps and connect them to the WMS. Modifying them later remains just as easy.

WMS as Ecosystem

This has the major advantage that WMS packages no longer need to support all special cases. Future packages will form an ecosystem with the WMS as the core and apps around it connected via APIs. That finally gives companies the freedom to realize their own way of working.

It’s clear that AI will drastically change the WMS market. The coming period will show which vendors embrace this development. So ask your WMS vendor how they plan to use AI to accelerate implementations and enable customer-specific requirements. It’s high time that WMS systems can grow with companies.

About the author
Jeroen van den Berg is the author of Highly Competitive Warehouse Management and holds a PhD in warehouse algorithms from the University of Twente. He has been advising companies on warehouse optimization and WMS since 1997, running his own consultancy since 2001. He develops Metrica, a Warehouse Optimization System.