Warehouse labor management systems are the layer of warehouse software that knows how long the work should take and reports how long it did. They hold an engineered standard for each process, clock hours against the lines, orders and receipts those hours produced, and show each shift, each person and each client account against the standard. Sold to large operations as a module of an enterprise WMS, the arithmetic underneath is small enough for a worksheet, and a small operator can run it before buying anything. This page is about what the systems hold and compute, and the free warehouse labor management system worksheet on this site works the headcount and the cost from your own figures.
What the system holds: standards per process
A standard is a measured rate for a process in a specific building: lines a picker hour, cases a receiver hour, orders a packer hour. The system holds one per process and per client where the profile differs, and the standard's quality decides everything after it. The worksheet takes the standard as an input, 60 lines an hour on the worked example, and publishes none of its own.
What it computes: hours, headcount, cost and performance
Lines over the standard is the hours the work should take; over the productive hours in a shift it is the pickers needed; times shift hours, days and a loaded rate it is the week's cost; and actual hours against standard hours is performance. 1,200 lines a day at 60 an hour on an eight-hour shift at 85% utilisation is three pickers and $2,640 a week at $22 an hour on the worked example.
What a small operator needs from it
The headcount for tomorrow, the cost for the week, the cost per line against what the client pays, and the drift when a shift falls below standard. The worksheet works the first three; Pickpathly Pro keeps the standard per process and each week's actual against it so the fourth is visible the week it starts rather than at the quarter's end.
Questions people ask about warehouse labor management systems
What is a warehouse labor management system?
Software that holds an engineered standard per process and reports hours worked against the work produced, per shift, per person and per client. Its arithmetic is what the worksheet on this site works from your figures.
How is warehouse labour performance calculated?
Standard hours (lines over the standard rate) divided by actual hours paid: a shift that picked 1,200 lines at a 60-an-hour standard earned 20 standard hours, and if it was paid 24 hours it ran at 83% of standard. The worksheet works the standard hours; the comparison is against your own clock.
Do I need a labour management system for a small warehouse?
You need the standard and the weekly comparison; whether they live in an enterprise module or in a worksheet and a record depends on the size of the team. The worksheet on this site is the arithmetic; Pickpathly Pro is the record.