Not quite ready to upgrade your WMS but feel like your much older version could run more efficiently? Here are six tips to help you get a more efficient WMS.
The best part? You and/or your IT team can try these on your own:
- Conduct database counts for how large your tables are getting, including checking row counts of tables – running the “list table row counts” command in the Server Command Operations can do this for you. As a general rule, if you have over a million rows of data in any single table you may have a problem that could be affecting system performance. For these tables, you should check your archive/purge commands to make sure they are working or consider creating a new purge or archive command.
- Keep your work queue clean. Use Work Queue System Operations to clear out old work. Depending on the operations, this should be done anywhere from every few days to every few weeks.
- Make sure your archiving and purging are working and being done. Run all the scheduled agents that purge data, etc. in trace mode to verify they are indeed working. Open some applications such as Shipment Maintenance, Order Maintenance, etc. and visually look for old data that should not be there. Note: sometimes data gets orphaned and the standard archive/purge jobs won’t remove the orphaned data.
- Clean up pick and replenishment queues. These queues can build up and need to be cleaned out regularly, in many cases, every few days.
- Remember to purge old files out of the inbound and outbound integration directories because Windows won’t handle large numbers of files in a directory very well and system performance will suffer. A good strategy is to setup folders by YYYY or YYYY-MM to move off the processed files if you have a need to retain them for a long period of time.
- Check to be sure your system(s) have enough disk space and your database tables have enough free space (at least 10% free).