The goal of New Dawn Supply Chain is to reinvent how WES and how it incorporates into the broader scope of warehouse software solutions. The acronym WES stands for Warehouse Execution System. In order to understand what that means, we need to look at Warehouse Management Systems (WMS), Warehouse Control Systems (WCS), and how inventory is managed an automated environment.
See below for some basic definitions of WMS, WCS, and WES. For further reading, DC Velocity has a great article about the differences between WES, WCS, and WMS here.
Warehouse Management System
WMS manages your inventory, from receiving to order management to shipment. WMS provides visibility to the inventory within a fulfillment center and structures what needs to happen with it.
Warehouse Control System
An automated warehouse has many interconnected sub systems such as: sortation, palletizing, pick to light, print and apply, etc. WCS provides single port connectivity to the higher level systems such as the WMS and communicates with the control layer resident in each of the sub systems.
Warehouse Execution System
WES is the next evolution of WCS and was created to provide broader order fulfillment functionality. By including features typically found in a WMS, inventory can be more actively managed which improves overall order processing performance. The timeliness and responsiveness of a single system allocating inventory and directing the warehouse automation to act upon it significantly improves the efficiency of the overall system. The WES is the link that communicates and coordinates between WMS along with all the warehouse inventory, and the machines controlled by WCS.
A good modern WES can help coordinate and control functions that would ordinarily require WCS, such as picking system management, packing system management, and sortation. Further, a good modern WES can help on the WMS side as well, coordinating and controlling functions such as labor management, shipping management, and SKU movement around the warehouse.
