Advanced Warehouse Management System with Customer Demand Forecasting Capabilities

Customer

The customer is a US-based company specializing in producing high-tech electronic components for various industries, including automotive, aerospace, and consumer electronics.

Need

As our customer operates multiple manufacturing facilities and distribution centers, they ran into limitations with their legacy warehouse management system (WMS). The system failed to provide the required level of real-time visibility and was struggling with performance issues. Additionally, the company faced challenges in demand forecasting accuracy, leading to suboptimal inventory management and failure to meet customer demand.

The client turned to HQSoftware to upgrade their legacy WMS and implement predictive analytics capabilities to enhance warehouse efficiency. 

Solution

The upgraded WMS is a unified platform for inventory management and order fulfillment that helps improve visibility into stock levels and speed up order shipping. Workers across all locations now have access to up-to-date information, increasing overall productivity and improving decision-making. 

Items

Dashboard

 

As well, our software development team has introduced predictive analytics capabilities. These include customer demand forecasting based on historical sales data. The system provides replenishment suggestions, allowing the customer to resupply on time without excess inventory.

Using Machine Learning algorithms for data analysis, the system first generates a general forecast of the required quantity of each item for a certain period. This forecast is then filtered by specified parameters, such as the minimum required amount of goods in stock, the delivery period for receiving goods from suppliers, minimum delivery quantity, etc. After filtration, the system provides replenishment recommendations based on current warehouse and supplier capabilities. These recommendations can be automatically applied, generating purchase orders based on a predetermined schedule. Alternatively, managers can manually generate orders using the specific recommendations provided.

Challenges

During the development process, the HQSoftware team faced several challenges.

Exploring a legacy solution. As our client had a legacy system that needed modernization and transition to new technologies, our team had to understand how the system worked.

The challenge came from the fact that the team was very short on technical documentation, so we had to figure out the solution ourselves. Despite this, we were able to successfully upgrade the WMS, improving its performance by up to 40%.

Data processing. Our team needed to choose suitable Machine Learning models that would provide accurate predictive analytics outcomes and could be flexible enough to analyze new data, such as ongoing sales. 

It was also important to ensure seamless data processing with a constant stream of incoming data. Our goal was to create a solution that could not only handle the current volume of data seamlessly but also sustain future growth in the database. Therefore, we designed a scalable architecture that can maintain high performance as the business expands.

By successfully overcoming these challenges, we were able to provide our customer with a high-quality, scalable solution with bug-free performance.

Team

• 1 project manager
• 1 tech lead
• 2 back-end developers
• 1 front-end developer
• 1 data scientist
• 1 business analyst (part-time)
• 1 QA engineer

Outcome

Partnering with HQSoftware, the customer received a comprehensive warehouse management system with real-time data visibility and features for advanced customer demand forecasting. This allows for effective management of the company’s inventory and satisfies changing customer demand.

The successful upgrade of the legacy WMS and integration of predictive analytics transformed the client’s logistics operations, decreasing inventory costs by 15%. By leveraging data-driven insights, the customer maintained a competitive edge in the industry and positioned themselves for further growth and success.

Need more information about our WMS development services? Contact us and get a free consultation.