Warehouse digital twin vs WMS: what a live map adds (and what it leaves to the WMS)

A WMS is, at heart, a transactional database with an excellent workflow engine. It knows what is in a bin, who touched it last and what should happen next. What it doesn’t know — and was never designed to know — is where that bin physically sits, what the aisle around it looks like, or which part of the building is filling up right now.

Our Acme Warehouse demo makes the boundary concrete. It has 17 racks with 314 bins, each bin carrying a code such as A-B01-L1. A Rack Inventory table holds one row per bin — status, SKU, ABC class, quantity, weight, expiry — exactly the fields a WMS would export. A data link colours every rack cell from that table, matching rows to cells by bin code, and five style rules paint the exceptions: Blocked bins, Expired stock, Expiring within 30 days, A-class fast mover and Empty pick-face.

Around the racks, a Warehouse Workers table places each person as a marker by coordinates, coloured by role, and a Pick Events log records picks, moves, sells and returns with the worker and forklift involved — the “events” half of the shared boundary. None of this changes how the WMS works; the twin only reads what the WMS already knows and puts it in place.

• A live floor plan — racks, bins, walls, doors and stairs on a real map, in real coordinates, viewable in 3D.
• Live layers from your own systems: rack cells tinted by bin status, people and equipment as markers, activity heatmaps and movement trails (data links).
• Read-only share links with an expiry date and an optional view cap, so contractors, insurers and auditors see the site without a WMS licence (share links).
• Style rules that recolour bins and zones from live data — the WMS reports a KPI, the twin shows where it is happening.
• Layout what-ifs — duplicate the facility and move an aisle in the copy while the WMS stays untouched.
• Walking routes and safety flow — a route preview worked out from the walls, doors and racks already drawn (one floor at a time; see the wayfinding docs), plus evacuation paths and forklift lanes you draw with the Route tool.
• Reports with a live map next to the numbers — every facility starts with eight built-in reports, including Racks and Walls & doors, and every table you link gets a report of its own (reports).

There is no packaged connector for a particular WMS. Instead there are three general ways in, and one of them fits almost any system:

• REST API — Spatial Map pulls JSON from an endpoint your WMS (or middleware) exposes, on a schedule (integrations).
• Upload file — a CSV, XLSX, JSON or GeoJSON export, matched to rack cells or shapes; good for a weekly bin snapshot.
• Table — your own schema with a write API and a bearer token per table, so your systems push rows as things change (tables).

For a step-by-step version of the file route, read CSV bin inventory to a live rack map.

Three symptoms usually show up together: stand-ups turn into debates about where things are, WMS reports are unreadable to anyone outside the building, and a contractor visit needs an escort because there is no view you can share. If any of them sounds familiar, a live map is worth a trial. Seven days — no card, up to five facilities — is enough to draw one site, connect one source and send one share link. After that, Pro is $60 a month or $600 a year for up to four facilities; the warehouse solution shows what a finished set-up looks like.

Share facility dialog