Warehouse Management Systems and Applications

This document delves into the multifaceted world of Warehouse Management Systems (WMS). It covers fundamental concepts, exploring how WMS integrates with operational data from OLTP and OLAP systems. The focus extends to real-world applications across diverse sectors like healthcare and humanitarian relief logistics. The impact of WMS on supply chains is examined, highlighting its role in optimizing warehouse operations and enhancing overall efficiency.

Running head: Warehouse Management System
Warehouse Management System
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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Executive summary
This report deals with understanding of the process of development of a Warehouse
Management System. The system has been designed and compiled with the help of C#
coding language and SQLSERVER 2000. To overcome the problems in the mandatory
maintenance, the Warehouse Management System can give the fast and accurate checking of
the product details in less time. Saving some time for the person responsible for the
maintenance of the warehouse would feel relieved that he is able to use this system. The
design has been done in such a way so that any type of future modification and enhancements
can be done easily. At the end, it can be concluded that the entire system can be used for the
automation of a small-scale warehouse

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Table of Contents
Introduction....................................................................................................................4
Deliverables................................................................................................................4
Life cycle followed....................................................................................................5
System Analysis.............................................................................................................5
Existing system..........................................................................................................5
Proposed system.........................................................................................................6
Objectives...................................................................................................................6
System Specifications....................................................................................................6
Hardware Requirements.............................................................................................6
Software Requirements..............................................................................................6
Design............................................................................................................................7
Entity Relationship Diagram..........................................................................................8
Use case diagram............................................................................................................9
Project modules..............................................................................................................9
Administrator.............................................................................................................9
Viewer......................................................................................................................10
Technology used for the project...................................................................................10
Data base tables............................................................................................................12
Feasibility study...........................................................................................................14
Implementation............................................................................................................14

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Testing..........................................................................................................................15
Maintenance and improvements..................................................................................15
Screenshots of the Warehouse Management System...................................................16
Schedule.......................................................................................................................20
Ethical review...............................................................................................................21
Conclusion....................................................................................................................21
Future Enhancements...................................................................................................22
References....................................................................................................................23
Bibliography.................................................................................................................24

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Introduction
The process that has been followed for the evolution of a Warehouse Management
System can be said to be similar to the development of many other software’s. The initial
system is for the controlling of the movement as well as the storage of all the different
products and materials in the warehouse (Ding 2013). The role of a Warehouse Management
System is to include the manufacturing, complete transportation as well as the order
management and the complete accounting management of the system (Jomaa, Monteiro and
Besombes 2013). Even though in the modern world the use of a Warehouse Management
System has increased there are small amount of proper systems, which would be able to
manage the complete system of a warehouse (Ding 2013). This project has been based on the
process to develop a minimal working structure of a warehouse management system to
demonstrate the understanding of the process of software development. The form of a
Warehouse Management System can vary from vendor to vendor based on the requirement
they are working on (Jomaa, Monteiro and Besombes 2013).
Deliverables
The project is to maintain the database and the details of the products in the
warehouse of the organization (Jomaa, Monteiro and Besombes 2013). The database is the
main portion of work in this project as it will be responsible for the storing of all the
information of the products in the warehouse. The data is to be stored in a virtual server from
where all the systems are to fetch the data and work on it (Jomaa, Monteiro and Besombes
2013). The design is to be compiled in the form of a web design. It will be an online real time
web based warehouse operation management software. The programming is to be compiled
with the help of C# ASP.NET and SQL SERVER language. A local area network connected
series of desktop systems are to be connected for the accessing of the database. The report

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consists of all the basis steps followed for the completion of the system and the report
(Jomaa, Monteiro and Besombes 2013).
Life cycle followed
For the project to be completed as per the requirement of the project, the project had
been developed according to the waterfall model of software development (Laudon and
Laudon 2016). In the waterfall model the steps of development of the project comes one after
the other and has been considered to be one of the most primitive kind of project management
working life cycle to follow (Laudon and Laudon 2016). The waterfall model though easy to
follow can pose a threat to the developers if it is not followed correctly. It in the middle of
development process it is found that there has been a mistake in one of the prior steps then
the complete project has to be dropped and start from the beginning. This requires a wastage
of money, resources as well as time, which cannot be retrieved back (Zhou and Fei 2016).
Thus it is important for the proper progress of the project to follow each step of the waterfall
model with proper consideration (Zhou and Fei 2016).
System Analysis
Existing system
For the process of developing this project, a study of the already available systems
were studied to understand the requirements, which they were able to meet, and the products,
which they were unable to deliver (Jomaa, Monteiro and Besombes 2013). Based on this, the
system has been developed to remove the disadvantage of information maintenance in book
journal system and the high amount of manual time required for the processing of the
products.

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Proposed system
The Warehouse Management System developed for this project avoids the wastage of
the excess hours of record keeping and maintenance of the journals manually. This has been
removed with the help of database usage for the complete system. All data is stored in the
database and fetched based upon the requirement of the user (Jomaa, Monteiro and Besombes
2013). This process thus reduces the amount of hours invested in the process of maintenance
of the warehouse. As it can be known that, a warehouse is a large place to manage properly.
Thus saving some time for the person responsible for the maintenance of the warehouse
would feel relieved that he is able to use this system.
Objectives
The objective based on which the project of Warehouse Management System has
been developed are:
 To develop a web based warehouse management system for an organization.
 To keep track of the inventory with the help of barcode scanning process.
 To eliminate the problem of tracking a particular product by searching the entire
warehouse manually.
System Specifications
Hardware Requirements
 Processor: Pentium IV or higher
 RAM of 1 GB
 Hard Disk of 500 GB
Software Requirements
 Windows 7 as Operating system

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 .NET framework 4.5 minimum
 Web-Technology of ASP.NET
 Front End as C#
 Back End of SQL SERVER 2000
 Web Server: IIS
Design
Designing of a system can be said to be the first step of any project. The development
phase cannot start without the proper steps to be followed for the completion of the designing
procedure of the system to be developed (Zhou and Fei 2016). This phase consists of the
techniques and the principles, which are to be followed throughout the project, which will be
able to define the working procedure of the project as well as provide enough amount of
sufficient details for the physical realization of the project to be complete. Once the basic
software requirements for the project has been discussed, analyzed and specified for the
project, the software design is to be taken into consideration with the four major technical
activities - design, coding, implementation and testing (Ramaa, Subramanya and
Rangaswamy 2012). These four steps are to be followed for the complete designing and
verification of a software.
The design phase can be said to be the most important part of the project as all the
following works that are to be conducted on the project is based on how well the project is to
be designed in their initial stage (Ramaa, Subramanya and Rangaswamy 2012). This stage
would be finally affecting the success of the project. The decisions that are to be taken have
the final process of affecting the maintainability and the reliability of the system being
developed. Designing the only process that can be followed which will allow the
transformation of the client’s requirements in to a skeleton of the system. The designing

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phase helps in maintaining the quality of the project as well as the success of it. The
preliminary design of the system is done with the help of transformation of the requirement
of the project in to feasible data.
Entity Relationship Diagram
Figure 1: Entity Relationship Diagram of the database tables

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Figure 2: Use Case Diagram for the Project
Project modules
Administrator
The administrator is able to log into the system, accept the registration of other users
and have the full access control of the project. The administrator is able to maintain the
privileges, which are to be provided to each of the user of the project. The administrator is
able to do the following jobs:
 Register other users onto the portal.
 Log in to the system.
 Access the operations of the warehouse management system:
o Add new categories and edit previous ones.
o Add new items and edit previous ones.
o Add new orders and edit previous ones.
o Add new suppliers and edit previous ones.
 View the other pages of the system.
Viewer
The viewer can be termed as the visitor of the project who is only able to see the
about us, home page and the details about the working of the system. The viewer can register
himself as a user of the system and gain permission upon the approval from the administrator.
The viewer is able to do the following jobs:
 Register himself on the portal
 View the home page.
 View about us page.

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Technology used for the project
ASP.NET with C# - ASP.NET is a web based application framework developed and
marketed by the Microsoft. The framework allows programmers and developers for the
building of dynamic web sites. The web pages are compiled with the help of C# or Visual
Basic .NET, which helps in building web applications easily (Ghiani Laporte and Musmanno
2013). As the project is being developed with the help ASP.NET web application the
understanding of languages and scripts in HTML, AJAX and CSS would help in making the
web pages dynamic and interactive. The framework makes use of the HTTP protocol for the
transferring of data and making the process of data connection of browser to server bilateral
communicable.
MICROSOFT SQL SERVER 2000 – Microsoft SQL Server 2000 is a database
management system, which is in the form of relational system developed by Microsoft. This
is a database product, which helps the users to store and retrieve data easily. Data is stored in
the form of tables and many tables are then grouped to form a database (Faber, de Koster and
Smidts 2013). The software is able to collect, store and then share the data over a connected
system of computers or within the same system. This software has been chosen for this
project, as it is helpful for the system to easily access the tables and the data from the
software with the help of connection string. There are many version of this software available
in the market. The one used for the project is of the 2000 version (Faber, de Koster and
Smidts 2013). The software is also found to be easily compatible with the ASP.NET coding.
For the safety of the collective database, the system has been configured to be executed in a
client server environment. This helps in keeping the database in a separate computer named
as the server and the other computers or the clients access the data from the server. The
connection is made with the help of local area network internet connection. This also helps

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saving the data baas from getting virus affected or hacked (Faber, de Koster and Smidts
2013).
HTML – For the sharing of information on the World Wide Web the developers
needs to write the details they want to share in a specific format. This format is the hypertext
markup language or HTML. This is a universally understood language used for the
publishing of web pages on the web. The language provides the users to create headings,
tables and list for making the web site interactive. However, the use of only HTML would not
be able to make the web page interactive in nature. This interactive nature can be achieved
with the help of CSS or java script which are small scripts inserted into the HTML code to
make the web page much more interactive and attractive. This would help in the attraction of
the attention from the viewers.
ADO.NET – ADO.NET helps in connecting the system of webpages of the software
to the database with the easy retrieval of the data from the tables and saving them to the
tables (Alhyasat and Al-Dalahmeh 2013). The module has functions such as connection and
command, which helps in the writing of the SQL commands and connection strings in the
code. Once connected successfully the database would be able to be connected to the web
pages. Other features for the data retrieval are Dataset, Data Reader and Data Adapter (Dotoli
et al. 2015).
Java script – This is a basic scripting language used alongside a web pages for
making the web pages interactive in nature. The scripts are written in java language and then
embedded into the web page’s HTML code (Alhyasat and Al-Dalahmeh 2013). The scripts
would be able to provide graphic design to the web pages as well as for the transferring of
data between the pages and the database (Dotoli et al. 2015). Scripts help in the reduction of

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time required for the transferring of data between the system and the database by working on
a process of data checking at the point of data entry.
Data base tables
dbo.category
categoryid NOT NULL INT PRIMARY KEY
name NOT NULL VARCHAR(20) NOT APPLICABLE
type NOT NULL VARCHAR(20) NOT APPLICABLE
suppliername NOT NULL VARCHAR(20) NOT APPLICABLE
dbo.itemtable
id NOT NULL INT PRIMARY KEY
name NOT NULL VARCHAR(10) NOT APPLICABLE
itemcode NOT NULL VARCHAR(20) NOT APPLICABLE
price NOT NULL INT NOT APPLICABLE
categoryid NOT NULL INT NOT APPLICABLE
reorderlevel NOT NULL INT NOT APPLICABLE
dbo.ordertb
orderid NOT NULL INT PRIMARY KEY
orderdate NOT NULL VARCHAR(20) NOT APPLICABLE
supplierid NOT NULL INT NOT APPLICABLE
dbo.Suppliertbl

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id NOT NULL INT PRIMARY KEY
name NOT NULL VARCHAR(50) NOT APPLICABLE
address NOT NULL VARCHAR(100) NOT APPLICABLE
categoryid NOT NULL INT NOT APPLICABLE
contact NOT NULL VARCHAR(12) NOT APPLICABLE
dbo.userdb
id NOT NULL INT PRIMARY KEY
name NOT NULL VARCHAR(30) NOT APPLICABLE
userid NOT NULL VARCHAR(20) NOT APPLICABLE
password NOT NULL VARCHAR(20) NOT APPLICABLE
zipcode NOT NULL VARCHAR(10) NOT APPLICABLE
contact NOT NULL VARCHAR(12) NOT APPLICABLE
address NOT NULL VARCHAR(75) NOT APPLICABLE
Feasibility study
Feasibility study is to be considered once the requirements and the specifications of
the project has been cleared. This study is conducted to understand if the project that has been
undertaken would be of a productive future or not. The objective of the study is to quickly
determine the problem solving procedure at an expense of small amount of time. There are
three types of feasibility study: technical feasibility, economic feasibility and operational
feasibility.

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Implementation
The stage of implementation of a project is the process of theoretical designing of the
project where the software coding is implemented on the designing of the project. This can be
termed as the most important step, which would help in the success of the project from this
point forward. The implementation of the project has to be done properly as per the
requirement to make it into a complete system, which will be able to work effectively and
efficiently. The system is implemented with a successive process of testing to check if the
system is working properly. This step includes the study of the existing system and the
requirement of the client which all to be taken into concern to make the project successful.
More the complex implementation of the system is being done the more amount of system
analysis and designing needs to be done for the system. For the project all the requirements
were met as well as the survey collected was studied during the implementation process.
Testing
For the development of a software or a system there needs to be thorough testing of
each step of development. This needs to be followed as the overlooking of any kind of
mistakes in the code and the implementation of the process would hamper the success rate of
the project. This step also makes the following of the objectives and the deliverables of the
project to be met as stated during the initiation of the project. The system is tested as soon as
a new module is added into it. This would help in making the later stages of the testing
procedure to get reduced. Apart from this at the end of the project completion a thorough
testing of the complete system is conducted in accordance to the requirements of the client
and the objectives of the project. All data validations and data storage is checked before
making a progress to install the system in to the system of the client. The testing procedure is
also conducted with the clients. In this step the system is shared with the clients and they use

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it for their daily work. This would pop up some of the bugs and glitches, which might have
been overlooked during the testing phase. These are then cleared out and the complete project
is passed on to the client.
Maintenance and improvements
A system can never be said to be cleared out at one go. There always stays back the
problems related to the bugs and glitches and the maintenance of the system and the database
from time to time. These requirements are covered under the topic of maintenance. The
developers provide a future maintenance for the project to the client so as to maintain the
proper working of the system that they have delivered. Maintenance also include the
provision of future updates for the project. If the client requires a new module to be added
into the system then it should be the duty of the developers to work on the module and
successfully implement it into the system. There are four types of changes which can be
included into the maintenance phase of the project: Correction, Enhancement, Adaptation and
Prevention.
Screenshots of the Warehouse Management System
The following screens show the implementation of the warehouse management
system as per the requirements for the completion of this report:
Home page: This is the home page of the system. Once the system is connected to
this is the first page, which will be visible to the viewer.

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Figure 3: Screen shot of Home page.
Log in page: This page helps the visitor to log into the system of the warehouse
management system for the working of the database of the project.
Figure 4: Screen shot of log in page
Registration page: This page helps the viewer to be registered into the system by
creating their profiles.

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Figure 5: Screen shot of registration page
Operations page: This page shows all the collection of the tabs and works which can
be done on the system. This page will not be visible unless the viewer has logged into the
system.
Figure 6: Screen shot of operations page
Supplier page: This page helps the user to add new supplier details to the database.

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Figure 7: Screen shot of supplier page
Category page: This page helps the user to add new category details to the database.
Figure 8: Screen shot of category page
Customer order page: This page helps the user to add new customer order details to
the database.

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Figure 9: Screen shot of customer order page
Item page: This page helps the user to add new item details to the database.
Figure 10: Screen shot of item page
Schedule
For the completion of this task, the following schedule had been followed:

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Figure 11: Gantt chart For the Project Timeline
Ethical review
For this project, a questionnaire had been circulated and a survey had been conducted
to understand the specific requirements, which is required by the users of such system. Based
on the feedback the result was studied and then the system was developed. I had taken feed
back from other students to understand if anything was going wrong with the project or not. I
was able to receive appropriate permissions from the management of a company who shall be
kept unnamed for the conduction of the practical work related to this project. This project
includes peers from the university. The project had been designed in such a way so that no
vulnerable focus groups were targeted and the participants were not shared any kind of form
for their participation in the survey. Appropriate and reasonable steps were taken so as to not
include or disclose the names of the participants in any place across this report.

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Conclusion
The complete packaged software was completed as per the requirement and the
objectives set forward during the initial stages of the project. The design has been done in
such a way so that any type of future modification and enhancements can be done easily. At
the end, the following conclusions can be drawn from the project:
 The entire system can be used for the automation of a small-scale warehouse.
 The project is able to provide the user with a soothing graphical user interface, which
would help them to navigate from one part of the project to another.
 It provides the correct amount of authentication power to the users as well as the visitors.
 Updating the details of the project is easy for the project.
 The system has a huge scope of future modifications to be implemented in to it easily.
Future Enhancements
The application is able to minimize the amount of manual work required for the
management of a warehouse. The system would also be able to minimize the effect of the
problems, which is related to the manual maintenance of a warehouse. The system has been
designed to primarily request information from the database related to the warehouse and
maintain the details of the products in the warehouse. The next enhancement for the project
can be listed as follows:
 In the field of making the items to be inserted into the database with the help of barcode
functionality. The function of searching anything from the whole database would help the
user to maintain the warehouse easily.
 The addition of a function to store the location of the product as well as the image of the
product would help in identifying the product easily.

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 The process of viewing the complete details of the product based on the effect of a click
function on the product id or the picture would help in understanding the product better.

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References
Ding, W., 2013. Study of smart warehouse management system based on the
IOT. intelligence computation and evolutionary computation, pp.203-207.
Jomaa, D., Monteiro, T. and Besombes, B., 2013. Design and development of a forecasting
module: Case of a warehouse management system. IFAC Proceedings Volumes, 46(24),
pp.177-182.
Laudon, K.C. and Laudon, J.P., 2016. Management information system. Pearson Education
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Zhou, C. and Fei, Q., 2016, December. Warehouse Management System Development Base
on Open Source Web Framework. In Industrial Informatics-Computing Technology,
Intelligent Technology, Industrial Information Integration (ICIICII), 2016 International
Conference on (pp. 65-68). IEEE.

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