Difference between Oracle Inventory and WMS

Both Inventory and WMS modules are used to hold the inventory and do transactions
like receiving and picking goods but WMS is more expensive then inventory coz WMS
has got some important premium features which is not there in Inventory module.

So to explain the differences are

Inventory without WMS is basically small in size and where the granular level
management and information are not required like labor cost, resource cost, etc.
For example small shops or small manufacturing units who basically holds the stocks
and ship it to their customer where not much of resources involved from warehouse
point of view, they can simply fulfil their business requirement by using the
Inventory module but if you will consider big transportation companies like UPS,
DHL or big retail or FMCG manufacturing companies who manufacture thousands of
products and they have their warehouse worked by number of resources, machines
maintained by various departments and spread across large locations, they cannot
fulfil their business requirement by simply with Inventory module, they need bit
more detailed analysis of warehouse resources, cost, efficiency, effectiveness and
want to track the time and labour to fulfil the customer demand in a more efficient
and cost effective ways then need to go with Warehouse Management System which
comes with all these features.

These are the basic features which WMS provides but not in Inventory
WMS comes with rule workbench which makes warehouse management lot easier and
efficient by defining different rules, pick rules, putaway rules, label printing
rules.
WMS provides cost involved in granular level in different tasks like shipping,
picking, fuel costs by machine, labour costs, etc.
From finance or accounting point of view, suppose business maintains a line of
products (more than one number of products but in one line, suppose a health care
company in its hair care product line makes different products like 100 ml, 200 ml
bottles, 10 ml sachets) stores in one subinventory but want to get valuation
accounting details for each product. It is not possible by Inventory as in
inventory all products are comes under one accounting which is defined in
subinventory but the same can be derived in WMS by using cost group rule.
So in Inventory module, accounting details canot be given down the subinventory
level but in WMS it can be derived in many different levels, in locator level, lot
level, supplier level, etc.
Lot more features are there like operation management, task dashboard where
warehouse manager can check each and individual resources and how much they are
occupied, according he can assign the task to complete in timely and cost effective
way which is lacking in Inventory.
From technology point of view, Mobile devices enabled with RF can be used with WMS,
so that means you can do transaction in real time on the go when you do physical
movement, you can do the same in system and also get the required label printed on
the go. But in Inventory these are two different tasks, you have to physically do
the transaction then need to come to the machine and do the transaction in system.
In big warehouses where everyday thousands of transactions are happening, this is
not a cost effective or efficient solution. But with WMS, all these things will be
ease.