Sales and Fulfillment

The benefits of automated warehousing in supply chain fulfilment

If you are an e-commerce or retail business, you may be under fierce market competition and looking to achieve better resource allocation, higher ROI, and stability against market fluctuations. This is where warehouse automation can help. It comprises digital and physical process automation, which collectively includes warehouse management systems (WMS), mobile scanning, barcodes, RFID, IoT, navigation systems, and wireless telemetry.

To withstand the rapidly changing market conditions and increase profits, businesses are investing in this technology. According to a study, the warehouse automation market will reach $26.9bn by the end of 2024.

In this article, we explore the benefits of automated warehousing in the supply chain, its challenges, and future trends.

Benefits of automated warehousing in supply chain management

From cost savings to better ROI and agility, businesses stand to gain several benefits and have a leg up in their day-to-day operations with automated warehousing:

Inventory optimisation

Technologies such as barcode scanners, RFID tags, and AI vision reduce human errors, make inventory management efficient and reliable, and enable businesses to maintain precision at all times. Automation helps track inventory accurately and get real-time data analysis.
Automated order fulfilment eliminates manual bottlenecks and helps achieve faster processing. This raises order accuracy, customer satisfaction, and loyalty.

Lower physical labour risks

Working with inventory can be a heavy-duty job, and workers might be prone to accidents and physical harm. Automation takes care of this by using robots, drones, conveyors, and other semi-automatic methods like forklifts. With this, businesses create a safer work environment.

Utilisation of human resources for strategic tasks

Once you release the manual labour from physically intensive tasks, they can upskill and focus on high-value tasks such as creativity, critical thinking, and logical analysis. This allows you to utilise the workforce strategically and even raise their wages, creating opportunities for career development.

Minimisation of human errors

In manual operations, human errors, such as counting mistakes, are common. For large businesses, such mistakes can pile up with significant consequences. Warehouse automation technology uses systems with precise algorithms that eliminate human errors. You can improve the efficiency of inventory tracking, order picking, and items packaging.

Preparedness for fluctuating demands

Markets can change quickly and unexpectedly for logistics, e-commerce, retail, and supply chain businesses. Warehouse automation allows you to stay prepared for such changes proactively and scale up or down during seasonal variations. You can adjust storage capacity, optimise transportation routes, and dynamically allocate resources with warehouse automation.

Smaller operational costs

Automation reduces the significant cost of labour and helps you achieve higher productivity. It also optimises space utilisation and picking routes, which allows you to achieve more with smaller spaces. By not needing large warehouses, you save the operational costs further.

Higher return on investment

Warehouse automation improves overall ROI through productivity and business growth. You can handle higher order volumes with lower processing times. This leads to customer satisfaction and potential expansion into newer markets.

Warehouse automation challenges

Automating warehouse management comes with an initial investment in implementing the technology and training the staff to use it judiciously. You also need the assistance of a third party to establish, maintain, and repair the systems for which you may not have in-house expertise. There must be proper maintenance, upgrade, and audit schedules to verify that the system performance is as per the expectations. Despite the upfront cost, the system’s benefits pay for itself multiple times in due course.

Current trends in warehouse automation

Warehouse automation technology will drive the transformation, fostering accuracy, efficiency, and safety. The most popular trends are:

• Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) will enable predictive analytics, route optimisation, demand planning, and order fulfilment.
• The Internet of Things (IoT) uses sensors to collect real-time inventory data and environmental conditions. This helps with maintenance and enhancing efficiency.
• Drones, autonomous vehicles, and robots move boxes and pallets without human intervention. Automated Guided Vehicles (AGVs) use lasers, floor markers, and magnets for navigation within the warehouse.
• Blockchain technology brings transparency and traceability, enabling secure cloud-based transactions.
• Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) accelerated employee training through immersive experiences.

How can Infosys BPM help with supply chain fulfilment?

Supply chain fulfilment solutions from Infosys BPM address crucial aspects of planning and execution. Key focus areas include demand vs inventory visibility, cost, forecasting, coordination between demand and supply value chains, asset returns and recovery, inventory shrinkage, and the bullwhip effect.

Read about automated warehousing at Infosys BPM.