Digitally-enabled warehouse performance

Another day, another week - absolute chaos reigned your warehouse after an unexpected peak in demand due to the newest trend.  Your employees can’t keep up and are working overtime? Your customers are unhappy because their returns are not getting processed in a timely manner? Has your newest IT system has led you down once again, and it seemed like everything was running smoothly but you face an out-of-stock situation that won’t be resolved for days? If this sounds familiar, a digitally-enabled warehouse is what you are looking for – it can turn your weakest points into a competitive advantage.

Through the power of a digitally enabled warehouse, companies can achieve up to 10–25% overall performance improvement  across design, realization, ramp-up, and operations.

Main impact drivers

• 10–20% higher labor productivity,
  through structured WMS configuration, faster testing (~10%), and ~15% fewer process errors during stabilization
  
  
• 20–25% faster ramp-up,
  through employing Digital Twin–based concept validation, emulation testing reducing integration issues by ~15–20%, and training and stress testing
  
  
• 15–25% service level improvement,
  achieved through Control Tower dashboards, defined KPIs, and real-time alerts, enabling ~20–25% faster SLA recovery during disruptions

A structured WMS reduces the testing efforts and results in faster stabilization, while the fewer process errors mean less rework and manual intervention. And with a structured WMS, companies create a stable backbone that makes sure that productivity gains aren’t a one-hit wonder but sustained. With a digital twin, companies reduce over- or under-dimensioning risk by around 20% - and get the right capacity from day one. The control tower creates better operational visibility through, e.g. real-time dashboard, making SLA recovery faster during unexpected disruptions. 

Maturity Gaps in Warehouse Systems limit Performance and Resilience under Uncertainty

When judging warehouse maturity, we don’t judge how modern or automated it is, but “how well is the warehouse able to remain stable, efficient, and controllable even under uncertainty?” Often, even though companies have started making an effort at optimizing their warehouses, they are still severely lacking.

This lack of system maturity shows in the most inconvenient moments, e.g.: 

• Peak orders
• Personal shortages
• IT-disruptions
• short-term changes in demand

The reality in many warehouses is that execution has benefited from decades of system support and process standardization, and while prediction exists at some level, it is often disconnected from the actual operational conditions with very limited accuracy in the forecasting. And Visibility, often the least mature, is often more ‘manual firefighting’ and requires real-time data integration and decision support, which is still emerging in many environments.

Strong execution alone does not create resilience. Without real-time visibility and effective prediction, warehouses remain reactive and rely heavily on manual intervention when conditions change. Closing this maturity gap means enabling warehouses not only to execute tasks, but to see, anticipate, and steer operations proactively. A digitally enabled warehouse is created by linking execution, prediction, and visibility in a sophisticated way that has real impact.

Building Warehouse Capabilities Beyond Execution

Digitally-enabled Warehouse Performance works because we unite analytics, processes/IT, and transformation into one integrated improvement engine.