Bush Life Pty Ltd unveiled it’s new warehouse management system (paperless warehousing) known as Know-Ware™ at Materials Handling and Distribution Expo in Sydney, Australia between the 16th and the 18th of June 1999.

Know-Ware™ is the culmination of over six years involvement with design and development of warehouse management systems.

Know-Ware™ is the next generation of warehouse management systems. It has been designed with flexibility, accuracy, and response in mind. Know-Ware™ is designed to be super-scalable, allowing the smallest warehouse to the largest to use it without response degradation. It has been designed using the standards for system architecture designated by the Object Management Group (OMG) whose members include Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Sun, and Microsoft. By using one of the OMG standards known as CORBA (Common Object Request Broker Architecture) systems are able to grow to almost seamlessly accommodate growth and expansion of warehouse requirements. Combine this with specially designed hardware to support pick-to-light, trolley picking, conveyor sortation control, automatic weight registration, etc, using different communications methods to provide faster response times and cheaper cabling costs Know-Ware™ is the first in complete warehouse management integration that successfully supports both small, large, and growing warehouses.

Know-Ware™ allows the client to select the operating system, database, and RF equipment platforms that they wish to run on, to enable coordination with the corporate computing directions. Know-Ware™ is currently supported on Unix and NT platforms, with support for Oracle, Informix, and Sequel Server RDBMS database systems. Support is currently available for Symbol equipment, with support for Intermic and Teklogix equipment planned for development on customer demand.

Know-Ware™ provides for automatic Internet-based ordering to be despatched direct to the warehouse without handling by any sales staff. This allows clients to direct sales through a customised web-interface so that you may develop in-house web applications if required to interface to the WMS. Current stock levels can also be shown on the web-site if so desired.

Know-Ware™ provides methods to allow Advanced Shipping Notes (ASN) to be handled without operator intervention. This allows integration from the suppliers, customers, and regional warehouses to all be coordinated. The ASN interface also provides feedback on availability of delivery slots to prevent double booking, and also ties in with cross-dock picking facilities.

Whilst the Know-Ware™ system is designed as a warehouse management system, it is equally designed to satisfy the requirements of a manufacturing environment with integral component build lists allowing "just in time" part delivery to component manufacturing stations.

With all the great design features, it is difficult not to gloss over what the WMS is intended to do. Know-Ware™ is designed with the entire warehouse operation in mind. We have escaped from the limitations of most systems which focus on the internal operations of the warehouse and provide no support prior to goods actually arriving in the warehouse, and prior to being loaded onto transports. Great features include automated replenishment requests for any location within the warehouse, visual warehouse configuration, equipment and user area restrictions.

The Know-Ware™ receiving component allows for various degrees of processing from simply accepting invoiced quantities, to full stock level verification. Orders to be received may be scheduled manually or automatically via ASN’s, or may be received without previous notification. Processing operators may work in tandem on the same order, or individually on orders as the requirement, or configuration, dictate. All options may be set to allow or disallow the appropriate processing method. An interface to a inventory management system is also provided to allow cross-referencing of invoices against expected goods receipt and to also advise when unsolicited goods arrive.

The Know-Ware™ picking component allows for many different pick methodologies to operate in combination. This means that an order may be automatically split between differing pick methods depending on warehouse layout configuration, equipment configuration, and stock availability. Equipment may be assigned to designated areas allowing managers to determine what areas particular equipment and staff have access to. Orders may be assigned priorities to allow urgent orders, or counter-sales orders to be picked urgently, and shipment orders to differing regional areas to be assigned a priority selectively or automatically based on the expected shipping time. One exceptional feature is the ability of the pick module to allow picking from any container that contains the required product, so if an item is at the bottom of a pallet of individually labelled products, the correct container contents will be maintained.

The Know-Ware™ warehouse operations component includes a uniquely simple method for relocation of goods. An operator may be allowed to move multiple units, or forced to move only single units depending on the configuration set. The same method is used for moving anything to anything else, to simplify operator use, and simplify training. This means that a replenishment operator functions in exactly the same way as a relocation operator, pallet build-up, order consolidation, and other tasks where movement of an item to another location is required. This of course is limited by certain configured practical constraints (ie. You would not want to move an order into another unrelated order).

The Know-Ware™ stock take component allows stock takes to be performed either cyclically, periodically, or rolling methods. Stock takes can be performed on warehouse regions, independent of others, so the entire warehouse need not be shut down to perform a stock take. Enforced cycle counting can be enabled to force counts on access of particular products, whereby the most valuable products could be cycle counted at every access, thereby improving security, and reducing the window of opportunity for goods lost, and also increasing traceability.

The configuration of Know-Ware™ is possibly the most user friendly in the world. The warehouse can be configured and viewed in map form, allowing rapid designation of regions for picking, equipment, and users. User and equipment configuration is simplified for selecting what options are to be enabled. Users can be given access to functions outside their position for those staff who must act in a higher designation for periods of time. Management statistics capabilities exist on products, tasks, and users, and also provide tracking capabilities for monitoring users. Exception reporting on various features is also available.