2020.06 Release

Please see the official release notes document and download links here:
http://wiki.produmex.name/doku.php?id=implementation:releasenotes:202006

Summary

Produmex WMS 2020.06 marks a milestone in the Produmex WMS product, and while it was launched just one and half months since the last release, it contains under the hood considerable improvements.

We are using the new Boyum versioning system (WMS 2020.06), and this version is our first release for SBO 10.

Our most important feature is two new flows, and while the flows are in themselves important, what is behind them is the real WMS advantage. These flows are built on a new framework, that will be the future of all WMS flows.

This framework allows independence from Controller settings and introduces the concepts of Flow settings and User settings. While this is still in its infancy and currently no user interface is available to change these settings, it forms the base of the system, and by Q3 release a new UI will be made available.

The potential of our new approach in enormous; it will allow in the future that the same flow can behave differently depending on the operator. E.g. allowing a senior picker to skip scanning the pick location, while a junior picker still needs to confirm they picked from the correct location every time. Or, for example, having a picking flow where the system will Autofill quantities and Auto select batch/BBD on pick and having a clone/copy of the picking flow that allows the picker to change the quantities and batches.

In other words, this is the beginning of the end for one size fits all for Produmex WMS flows. In the future customers will be able to fine-tune multiple variations of the WMS flows and are no longer limited to have only one configuration for the picking flow.

As to the actual new flows, Box Pick & Pack Flow will allow customers to pick using a single movable location, directly into SSCCs (boxes for example), skipping the packing phase. This flow allows picking for multiple customers in a single wave, with WMS keeping track of which boxes (SSCCs) are for which customer/address pair. SSCC (logistics units) can be created and closed on the fly, with immediate printing of their labels (both logistic and content labels). One important feature is the support for picking full pallets and being able to keep their current SSCC.

The Unload Movable Locations to Dock Flow is the second part of this new picking way and allows to unload the SSCCs from a movable location into one or more Docks (as assigned on the Picklists). WMS knows, and enforces, to which dock each SSCC needs to be unloaded.

In the future the Box Pick & Pack flow will allow the use of multiple movable locations and unloading to a packing station (and not only a dock), therefore making obsolete the “Multi Picking” and “Prepare Carts” flows. It will also allow the use of preprint SSCC labels and postponing the printing of content labels until the end of the wave. The Flow Unload Movable locations in the future will allow bulk unloading and even unloading to a non-dock location, such as a Packing station or another location for final packing/sealing, recount, or even for quality control.

More major performance changes are implemented, and we currently have Produmex WMS running on customers processing more than 20,000 sales orders and over 15,000 delivery notes per day, using more than 100 concurrent scanners. In this environment, our Produmex Delivery Note systems can maintain a processing time under 10 seconds. Nevertheless, we keep monitoring and improving WMS performance on each release.

We will soon be posting an updated performance guide in Boyum help portal.

A last, but still relevant was a change to the Picklist Robot. It now duplicates the functionality of the Picklist Proposal Manager. That means that if the result of the PMX_PICK_LIST_ROBOT_CREATE_PROPOSALS view and the selected lines in the Picklist Proposal Manager contains the same document lines, the two different processes generate the same proposals with the same proposal lines.

Produmex WMS now supports the POI field on the Goods Receipt PO screen if the SAP country database is set to Argentina. The field is mandatory to be filled in to create a Goods Receipt PO document in that country.