UNHRD faces: Michele

Talking about 'back end systems' for the upcoming portal (see this post): the Warehouse Management System (WMS for short) is one of the big new back-end systems.

This SAP based product is keeping track of all the incoming, outgoing and stored goods of the UNHRD (the WFP managed Humanitarian Response Depots).

The WMS is a new system for UNHRD, as previously inventories were tracked through a combination of Access Databases and Excel spreadsheets.

Michele has been one of the UNHRD Brindisi aces migrating the data from the legacy systems onto the WMS.

The Front and the Back

Busy times at the UNHRD! The boys and girls in Brindisi are inputting the data into the various new back-end systems.

"back-end?"... Well, remember this diagram:



The portal website will be the front, through which the user and the customer service system will access data stored in several backend systems:

- The warehouse management system (WMS) which holds the data for all items stored in the warehouses.
- WINGS (the corporate ERP system, running on SAP) holds procurement and invoicing data.
- the customer database holds all data for each user logging in
- the customer service system contains the data for each order
- the product catalogue is a new system storing all specifications, pictures, manuals and manufacturer details for each product stored in the warehouses.

Nadia, our WMS guru

The Warehouse Management System (WMS) is our of the "back-end systems" we use in the Portal project. It runs on SAP and contains the warehouse inventory of the items the UN Humanitarian Response Depots (UNHRD) have in stock. It also supports the whole workflow from receiving goods, storing, picking and dispatching goods.

WMS is integrated in the WFP corporate ERP system, "WINGS".

The new Portal (the front-end website) we are designing will read and write data onto the WMS during the ordering and dispatching process. It will ensure that the data we represent in the Portal is correct and up to date.

Currently, the UNHRD Warehouse Management System is being rolled out, and at the same time upgraded to a new SAP version. So a whole team of experts have their hands full.

Nadia is our Brindisi-based devil-do-it-all, supervising the WMS-team. If anyone in WFP knows the WMS system, she is the one.