Manhattan Associates highlights WES approach at ProMat

Supply chain software provider Manhattan Associates is continuing to see interest from its user base in its warehouse execution system (WES) capabilities, said Adam Kline, a senior director for product management with the company, during a Tuesday booth visit at ProMat. .

Last year, Manhattan Associates announced it had embedded WES capabilities within its warehouse management system (WMS), building off the “Order Streaming” capabilities it had announced previously. Last year’s enhancements also resulted in a single intelligent fulfillment optimization engine capable of simultaneously processing wave, waveless and flow-through orders in a facility.

Kline explained that the overall WES approach at Manhattan is a wholistic one—managing and coordinating people, inventory, orders, machinery and even factoring in tasks. “The key is to keep all of these resources highly utilized,” said Kline.

Kline acknowledged that today there are various WES vendor approaches to orchestrating resources, with some vendors coming at the challenge more from an automation direction, and others from more of a warehouse order release and labor direction.

Overall, Kline concluded, WES solutions need to orchestrate all resources and be able to coordinate with all types of automation, including mobile robotics, pick-to-light systems, shuttles, or other forms of automated equipment, to be effective. “Our play has to be orchestrating all the work across both people and all types of machines,” Kline said.