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Inventory Management vs. Warehouse Management

As a part of your supply chain, inventory management includes controlling and overseeing purchases — from suppliers and customers — maintaining the storage of stock, controlling the amount of product for sale, and order fulfillment.

Naturally, your company’s precise inventory management meaning will vary based on the types of products you sell and the channels you sell them through. But as long as those essential ingredients are present, you’ll have a solid foundation to build on.

Small-to-medium businesses (SMBs) often use Excel, Google Sheets, or other manual tools to keep track of inventory databases and make decisions about ordering.

What’s the difference between inventory management and warehouse management? While the two terms overlap, there are critical differences between inventory management and warehouse management.

Inventory management is focused solely on the actual items held within a warehouse. As a part of your supply chain, inventory management includes controlling and overseeing purchases from suppliers and customers — maintaining the storage of stock, controlling the amount of product for sale, and order fulfillment.

In contrast, Warehouse management is more concerned with the “journey” of individual items as they flow through the warehouse from receipt to shipment.

Warehouse management is the process, control, and optimization of warehouse operations from inventory entry into a warehouse or multiple warehouses until items are sold or consumed.

Warehouse management systems (WMS) have a higher level of discipline for the journey of the item. Warehouse management can apply data-driven science to the warehouse to optimize the layout, item placement at putaway, and more complex picking algorithms.

When items are received into WMS, the system may direct where to place them on a rack location known as putaway.

The item is now visible to the sales order process and ready for fulfillment. When pick ticket orders are submitted to the warehouse, the items go through a shipping quality control followed by the shipping process. Once complete, the reporting back to WMS closes the pick ticket, and the sales order is updated, and inventory is adjusted.

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