WMS for Cold Storage Facilities

Transforming your facility from a cost center to a revenue generator isn’t just a “nice-to-have”. It’s becoming a business imperative. In this post, we’re breaking down the top ten reasons to implement a cold storage WMS this year and prepare for the great cold boom in less than a decade.

WMS for Cold Storage Facilities: Optimizing Thermal Efficiency and Sub-Zero Operations

Every degree is critical in cold storage. Even one-degree fluctuation can compromise the safety and freshness of the stored products. When doorways are left open, cold air spills out and warm air rushes in, quickly impacting warehouse temperatures. Efficiently directing staff ensures doors are open for as little time as possible, optimizing energy use and saving money.

Thermal efficiency isn’t only about costs. Are you certain the spinach’s safety and quality haven’t already been compromised before it even reaches your insulating walls? Cold Chain Warehouse Software includes temperature sensors, providing immediate real-time updates and historical data for all zones. If a cooler fluctuates and goes above your preset range, our WMS immediately alerts your response team, often long before spoilage actually occurs.

The Harsh Realities of Refrigerated and Frozen Warehousing

Who would want to keep their products in a cold storage warehouse under such conditions? What is it that makes it both necessary and worthwhile to maintain the cold chain in food storage and distribution, at all costs? How is it that chocolate always feels smooth and melts in your mouth, never in the package, even in summer? How do you ensure frozen fruits deliver the same nutritional value as fresh? Nascent life in the form of fish fingers and fries emerges immaculate from the deep freeze. So while there’s a lot that can and does go wrong, for the most part it goes right. How? Stringent quality control and regulation are part of it. But mainly it’s down to cold, hard science. As most microorganisms stop multiplying at low temperatures, refrigeration and freezing ensure the survival. Cold storage warehouses are also relatively economical to build and maintain, even in the age of the mega warehouse with its miles of refrigeration ducts. Even so, there are millions of square meters of food and other products for which they form an essential part of the logistics at any given time. What is constantly growing, producing, and storing microbes? Something you’ve probably never heard of: agar.

Using paper logs or basic spreadsheets to solve the problem is a disaster waiting to happen. Batch tracking, expiry management, and temperature mapping require real-time work in progress and finished goods inventory visibility to be effective. Our manufacturing warehouse software easily integrates with your ERP to provide the transparency you need.

Balancing High Energy Costs, Harsh Worker Environments, and Strict Temperature Zones

We know there are lots of Warehouse Management Systems to choose from. Some are more specialized, others more broadly functional. But no matter how sophisticated a WMS appears, if it can’t correctly prioritize, document, and track your unique product storage and rotation requirements, you’ll probably be squandering more savings than you’re earning.

Armstrong Dematic‘s Windows Management Systems for Retail and Food Industry, is particularly awesome at cutting costs. It “learns” the pattern of orders and creates an optimal route to follow on subsequent visits. The software also looks at the frozen warehouse as a whole and offers suggestions, such as using a different layout to streamline picking or instituting zone picking for similar good to be assembled for delivery to an area. Split casings are handled automatically in a pool of inventory.

Protecting Workforce Health and Operational Accuracy

Your most important means of production aren’t the machines on your factory floor; they’re your team. But how do you keep your workers safe and motivated when the environment is less than optimal? In a cold warehouse, for example, where temperatures can go down to -10 °F? Cold workers are less likely to perform at their best; fatigue and negative impact on morale can lead to errors. Worse, tired or cold workers are much more likely to have an accident. When your workforce is on the front line of your operation, you can’t afford to take that risk.

How many times have you come across a product in a store that was past its expiry date? Did it make you wonder whether the shop regularly checked its shelves? Inventory management using RFID technology might just be the way to ensure this doesn’t happen too often. It’s surprisingly quite common in the retail sector, but the fewer mistakes made, the fewer discounts you’ll see! Employee errors can also be minimized, so less time and cost are spent applying markdowns.

Reducing Manual Labor Hours in Sub-Zero Vaults Using Guided Workflows

Manual data entry can be a real energy drain on your team. Not to mention the fact that more time spent in a cold facility than absolutely necessary means higher risk of accidents. Our solutions reduce reliance on keyboard input and guide operators effortlessly through their tasks.

Work in the field, on the factory floor, or at a construction site? During a maintenance task with your hands full? Use text-based instructions to keep your phone in your pocket.

Automated Expiry and Temperature Alarm Monitoring

Ever thought about the true impact of a defective cooler on your product? The fruit of your labor gone bad? The unpleasant smell? The stomach turning at the sight of spoiled items? It’s not just waste- it’s money down the drain. Because products stored at the wrong temperature can spoil. It may not be apparent, but it can and will happen at some point. And spoilage doesn’t just impact your bottom line. It hits your brand, too. Reputations years, even decades, in the making can be tarnished for the want of good refrigeration. Additionally, the cost of the lost product, future orders, and the labor spent restocking can add up to massive revenue drain on your business. Armstong dematic‘s WMS provides automated expiry checks and temperature alarm monitoring.

What makes these things so important? Well, higher standards and potential liabilities can put small companies out of business. And larger companies need to protect supply chains and brand reputation while securing their social license to operate.

Building a Resilient, Cost-Effective Cold Chain Network

How to define resilience? Pick your favorite business buzzword and it probably fits the definition. Agile? Check. Responsive? Check. Adaptable? Check. All those terms manage to capture the idea: the more responsive you can be to any event or change, the more resilient your operation will be. WMS doesn’t prevent disruptions, but it does optimize your response to them.

But, what are the key considerations to help you determine if a modern WMS is right for your business, as well as identify WMS features that can help improve your bottom line? Let’s take a closer look.

Cold storage, it’s a harsh world in there. You’re managing thousands of pallet locations, huge, heavy, and often mobile racking systems, and it’s all sub-zero! With demand ever-higher and the competition just as fierce, you can’t afford to leave anything to chance. But with Armstrong dematic’s WMS, you won’t have to. You’ll know exactly where everything is, all of the time. Controlling your operation all the way down to -30°C might seem like a big enough challenge, but what if we encouraged you to think of it as a tall, cold glass of water on a hot day? A refreshing change! The power and simplicity of Armstrong dematic’s WMS make it surprisingly easy to master the coldest world your inventory will ever know.