JDA Software, the warehouse management software-as-a-service (SaaS) firm, has announced Luminate Warehouse Tasking, a new add-on to its warehouse management system that uses machine-learning to optimize supply chains from the ground up.
As the supply chain becomes more complicated—and even more important—brands and retailers have, at times, struggled to manage the complex systems behind sourcing. Many have turned to SaaS companies like JDA Software to take some of the load off of warehouse management personnel.
Now, with Luminate Warehouse Tasking, even more of the minutiae can be handed off to cloud-based AI, freeing up leadership and warehouse employees to focus on the important business of building a brand.
“Luminate Warehouse Tasking solves the problem of peaks and valleys in labor utilization that come from traditional wave operations,” JDA Software said in a statement. “JDA’s optimized tasking capabilities use machine-learning algorithms to focus labor on priorities for timely shipments at reduced costs, even with aggressive service levels. Tasks are de-escalated and escalated and prioritized based on due dates, starting with the end date in mind to meet more aggressive service level expectations, while reducing costs.”
Although short of a true artificial intelligence, JDA’s software will be capable of examining specific needs and issues in the supply chain, and arranging the resources of a company’s logistics and distribution departments to best solve those problems through “continuous, near real-time task optimization.” The software will be able to analyze solutions based on real-world travel times, due dates and up-to-date resource location.
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Luminate Warehouse Tasking can also dynamically make decisions based on these factors, eventually finding ways to prioritize and rearrange to reduce travel times between tasks while staying true to due times and locations.
“Maintaining the highest level of efficiency and the lowest cost of operations is always a challenge in today’s fast-paced environment. Luminate Warehouse Tasking starts with the end in mind by determining what tasks are most important to the bottom line and escalates those over lesser priority tasks, bringing the power of machine-learning to warehouse operations,” said Scott Zickert, group vice president of product management at JDA. “Luminate Warehouse Tasking is a powerful new capability that exemplifies the innovation being developed across the Luminate portfolio that extends and enhances JDA’s core solutions, preparing our customers for the transformative technologies that will make the Autonomous Supply Chain a reality.”
The “Autonomous Supply Chain” has long been a goal of JDA Software and the solutions it offers are designed to provide a supply chain driven by cloud-based AI from end-to-end. The company believes its Luminate Warehouse Tasking software will bring that vision closer to reality.
The integration of such a system will likely prove the most challenging—but JDA has also focused on the way it interacts with its human partners. The software will help visualize its intentions with a side-by-side comparison of its suggestions and current operations, accessible through its digital dashboard. Thanks to a recently released update, employees and managers can now view this dashboard using their mobile devices.