Warehouse Technology and Dynamics GP

Modern Corporate ERP system typically doesn’t support advanced features, available in the barcode laser scanner, which is in fact small computer with its own processor, memory, operating system, and this fact makes it more complex, comparing to the cheaper version of the scanner, attached to your computer or cash register via USB port.  Such processes as scanning documents in the batch mode, and then uploading them as the batch of Sales invoices, Purchase receipts or Inventory adjustments, is where you need middleware, or warehouse extension for your Great Plains.  Let’s take a look at some details:

1. Client-Server technology for the Warehouse Management System.  Each barcode scanner has its client WMS application running and communicating with the central warehouse computer, or WMS server.  The server itself should have permanent connection to your ERP hosting SQL Server.  In order to simplify the connection setup, we suggested to have WMS Server to talk to GP via ODBC connection, and for the client application, taking into consideration limited scanner computer resources, it is coded in such simple programming language as old Visual Basic

2. Warehouse documents transformation map.  Three routes are available.  The first one is moving Fulfilled Order as SOP fulfillment process.  We recommend you to consider uncheck automatic order or invoice line allocation – by doing so you enable separate fulfillment process, which should be done in the warehouse and propagated into your Sales Invoices or Orders.  The second route is inventory restocking documents, they are moving to your Purchase Order Processing module in the form of Purchase Receipts.  And the third way is inventory adjustments and moves, they go into the Inventory Control module transactions respectively

3. Lot and Serial numbers.  The most natural way for mass transactions on the warehouse floor is lot numbering, which is supported directly in the WMS extensions.  Regarding serial numbering – typically we are talking here about big price ticket items, which could be entered manually, however the module is open for custom programming

4. Implementation considerations.  First of all we would like you to suggest phased approach, where you do not plan Supply Chain Management add-ons to be implemented in the initial phase.  Second, if your ERP was implemented several years ago, we recommend you to be on the current version 2010 or at list 10.0, as the cost of upgrade is the fraction of what you may expect to be your warehouse automation budget

5. Low profile Warehouse systems.  We recommend you to think about the host-slave approach in the ERP.  The cheapest way is to keep your Accounting system just receiving Warehouse transactions integration as General Ledger transactions and have external WMS do the Inventory count, shipping and receiving.  Second approach for budget sensitive customer is to deploy Integration Manager.  Let’s imagine the scenario, where you already have in-house programmed in MS Access, Visual Basic, FoxPro, MySQL, Oracle or another development environment simple Warehouse automation system, which works fine in production.  Consider just exporting documents into text file or open the database via ODBC connection, if you do so – Integration Manager should be able to move the documents into GP

6. For additional information, please feel free to call us 1-866-528-0577 or 1-630-961-5918 (this number works for international customers) or email us help@albaspectrum.com  We serve you USA/Canada nationwide via remote support (web sessions and phone/Skype conferences).  Local service is available in Western Michigan, Chicagoland, Southern California (LA, Orange County, San Diego), Houston area of the state of Texas