WMS continues strong growth

The Warehouse Management System (WMS) market grew by close to 5% in 2002, which is a nice recovery for this market that stands out among the enterprise software applications.

The recent past was not so good. Between 2000 and 2001, WMS sales worldwide shrank by 6%, while in North America they shrank by almost 12%.

WMS applications have faced the natural downturn in sales following the surge of buying from year 2000 and the e-fulfillment boom. Added to the downward pressure on the WMS market was the slowdown in the global economy.

In 2002 the market for WMS software and services stood at $737 million. Thus, the cumulative average growth rate between 1998 and 2001 was 4.1%.

The average is a good indicator of what the average future growth rate is likely to be.

This overall stability drives internal market dynamics that are good news for potential customers of WMS solutions.

WMS applications have often been seen as a solution for a finished goods distribution centre (DC). However, among best-of-breed WMS suppliers with revenues of over $10 million, over 30% of implementations are outside of DCs. Falling prices mean that radio frequency (RF) solutions become practical for a broader range of warehouses. RF-enabled WMS solutions are used by warehouses designed to support manufacturing, customer service, merge-in-transit facilities, or mixing centre warehouses.