Manufacturing and distribution have become more complex as consumer demands have continued to rise. Today’s supply chain operations need to run more productively, efficiently, and safely than ever before. It can be a challenge to keep up, but warehouse automation can be the solution.
Understanding Why Warehouse Automation Is Needed
If you’re looking to modernize your supply chain, then consider these 11 benefits of warehouse automation:
- Increased production: Automating your operations will increase production by allowing you to operate around the clock—no need for shift layovers or breaks. In addition, automation can help you guarantee per-day or per-minute quotas.
- Labor solution: With national unemployment at a decade low, many companies face the trouble of finding workers for their labor positions. Proper automation can help fill in the labor gap.
- Cost savings: Operational costs will continue to rise, but the cost of implementing automation continues to become more affordable. Robotics, conveyor sorting, and pick and pack systems are all within reach of the average business owner.
- Safety: Automation robotics enables your warehouse staff to work more safely. Robotics can handle the more dangerous aspects of your operations, reducing the risk of worker injury and absences.
- Customization: Warehouse automation isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution. Your organization is unique and requires a custom solution. There are many automation elements such as robotics, conveyor systems, automated storage, retrieval, and pick and pack solutions. You can work with your robotics supplier to create a solution that best meets your needs.
- Data collection: Automation also means that you get better insights into your operations through real-time data collection. You’ll know your production rate, storage capacity, inventory levels, and other vital statistics that can help you make quick and informed decisions.
- Better use of existing space: Let’s face it. It seems like there’s never enough space in your existing warehouse. You may be thinking it’s time to expand or move to a bigger location, but automation can offer a solution. Automated storage and retrieval systems can store more products in a smaller amount of space. In fact, some systems can store 40{4c4f03b91cd9576fd99f221c8ec5638e80a399c7c28249074e73a48353523d39} more pallets in the same space as a conventional rack warehouse.
- Optimized order fulfillment: With an automated warehouse, organizations can establish efficient picking processes, routes, and sequences to enable the better overall performance of the warehouse.
- Less product damage: Automated technology ensures the safe handling of products and minimizes the chance of product damage when workers move products around the warehouse. Less human interaction with the product equals less damaged product.
- Faster shipping: With transportation being somewhat unreliable, automated technology can eliminate staged orders waiting to be picked up by implementing just-in-time (JIT) order fulfillment. The idea behind JIT order fulfillment is to prepare orders right when the truck arrives on site, as efficiently and quickly as possible. This frees up a great deal of warehouse space and keeps everything flowing.
- Eco-friendly factors: It may not be the first thing that comes to mind when you think about warehouse automation, but it does have environmental benefits. Automated warehouses require less energy to function, take up less space, produce lower amounts of greenhouse gases, and reduce stretch wrap consumption compared to non-automated warehouses.
If you’re considering warehouse automation or looking for other solutions to your supply chain challenges, then speak to Taylored Fulfillment Services. We’re a fully integrated third-party logistics provider specializing in wholesale, retail, and direct-to-consumer unit fulfillment. Established in 1992 and headquartered in Iselin, New Jersey, we operate 1.5 million square feet of warehouse and distribution space strategically located near the nation’s busiest ports, including Los Angeles, Long Beach, and New York.