A lot of technology changes and automation are happening in the supply chain and logistics industry across the world. As an industry user or a person who is part of this industry directly or indirectly, it is important to keep a tab of industry trends regularly.
Let’s understand more about warehouse automation in this blog.
The supply chain and logistics is a catalyst for every industry which enables them to provide products and services to their customers. It makes it a partner for every industry to provide the best experience to their customers. To achieve this, the players in the supply chain and logistics industry have been innovating and integrating modern technologies by investing hugely.
An area within logistics that has been in focus for its adoption of modern technologies is warehousing. This is particularly visible in developed nations where the logistics service provides, warehousing pure-play players, and manufacturers who operate their warehouses jumped into the bandwagon to get their warehouses to implement the latest technologies. The objectives behind the adoption of tech in its operations were to achieve cost reduction, automate mundane tasks, reduce waste, cut lead time, achieve economy of scale, maximize storage space, and ensure safety and security of the goods and personnel among several important objectives.
This was achieved by adopting a warehouse management system and warehouse automation systems. This also required huge capital cost the companies had to bear to implement these adoptions and train the personnel who are the end-user of these technologies in the warehouses. While the warehouse management system enabled the warehouses to provide automated procedures to improve efficiency and minimize costs, warehouse automation enabled the warehouses to minimize manual tasks and speed up tasks from receiving to shipping.
The successful adoption of warehouse automation in the developed nations inspired the warehouses in the developing countries to implement warehouse automation. This was both a business requirement as well as the requirement for its customers who have set up their shops in developing countries. Owing to higher capital costs, the adoption rate was lower in developing countries in the last decade. However, things have changed in the past few years when several companies manufacturing warehouse automation equipment began to design them keeping in mind the specific needs of their customers in the developing countries.
As per the need and capital investment available, the warehouses chose between basic, mechanized, and advanced automation systems. The warehouse automation can be The warehouses that implemented warehouse automation benefited immensely from increased warehouse throughput, better utilization of resources, reduced operational costs, better customer service, reduced errors, better inventory control, higher accuracy rate, and improved efficiency.
The latest game-changer in warehouse automation is the introduction of robotics. It may take some time for us to see a lot of robots in the warehouses in developing nations such as India because the warehouse operations are by and large labor-intensive. However, the story is different in nations such as Japan, where there exists a huge shortage of labor force to manage the warehouse operations. As per an article by Oracle Netsuite, the investments in warehouse robotics have been up by 57 percent. From the trend seen across the globe, the momentum of implementing warehouse robotics-led automation is likely to go up in the coming years.
Thank you for reading, we hope you found this article on warehouse automation useful. Please do share your feedback and let us know areas you want to know more about.
