Did you know businesses could lose over 45% of their annual profits yearly due to supply chain disruptions?
It’s no secret that the supply chain is fraught with challenges ranging from geopolitical upheavals to labor shortages and natural disasters.
Here are a few common challenges that have led to an unsettled feeling in the market.
- Labor shortages: Labor shortages are among the topmost reasons for supply chain disruptions. There are few workers in warehouses and factories, which has slowed the supply chain. Additionally, companies cannot adopt digital transformation at a fast pace. According to a McKinsey survey, 90% of supply chain leaders cite a lack of skilled workers as a reason for slow digital transformation.
- Natural disasters: Call it a global warming effect, but natural disasters have increased significantly in recent years. Forest fires, landslides, and hurricanes have become more frequent and intense. This has led to delayed shipments, fragmented operations, and a shortage of critical goods.
- Geo-political uncertainties: Geo-political and economic challenges, such as trade wars, trade route issues, and political conflicts, have caused cross-border disruptions. This has made it difficult for businesses to procure raw materials and finished goods.
At a time when customer demands are high, businesses have to find ways to meet them fast despite the disruptions.
That’s where technologies like warehouse automation could come to the rescue by offering the possibility of improving efficiencies and optimizing resource utilization.
What is Warehouse Automation?
Warehouse automation combines technologies, tools, and processes that automate processes like picking, sorting, packaging, and shipping products. Typically, these tasks are automated by integrating sensors, robotics, and advanced software solutions with the processes. With warehouse automation, businesses can improve workers’ productivity, save costs on labor and operations, optimize spaces for more efficiency, and enhance inventory management.
Let’s look at how warehouse automation can help businesses improve efficiency and throughput despite the bottlenecks.
How Can Warehouse Automation Help Businesses Stay Ahead of Competition?
- Reduce dependency on labor
From the aging population to the lack of skills, businesses worldwide worry about the impact of labor shortages on the supply chain. The only way to solve this problem is by using warehouse automation. With warehouse automation, businesses can automate repetitive tasks like picking, sorting, and packing products and scale up or down depending on business demand. This reduces dependency on the workforce and enables businesses to pick, sort, pack, and ship products on time. Besides bridging the talent gap, warehouse automation reduces errors, accelerates production, improves throughput, and ensures long-term stability.
- Improve resiliency and agility
Resiliency and agility are essential as businesses face the brunt of various geopolitical, economic, and environmental disruptions. Businesses that don’t pivot and adapt on time risk losing customers and falling behind the competition. That’s why warehouse automation is so crucial. It ensures business continuity despite various bottlenecks. To begin with, warehouse automation automates the core warehouse processes like picking, sorting, and packaging. This minimizes the risk of errors and accelerates the order fulfillment time. Next, it provides real-time insights into warehouse operations that help decision-makers take quick action and adapt to changing market demands. It supports scalability and agility and ensures timely shipping.
- Optimize spaces for easy navigation and inventory management
Speedy delivery has become a norm in modern-day manufacturing. Businesses have to accelerate everything – from manufacturing to delivery to meet market and customer demands. To meet the demands on time, businesses need optimized spaces to arrange the inventory strategically, find and retrieve products quickly, and ship them faster. Warehouse automation systems like automated guided vehicles (AGVs) and autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) can help navigate spaces independently and ensure the smooth movement of products. Similarly, technologies like Goods-to-Person (GTP) systems eliminate the need to move goods manually. It can bring the products to the workers directly and reduce their efforts.
- Increase throughput with Automated Storage and Retrieval System (ASRS)
Throughput is an important metric as it measures how many products move from warehouse to shipment within a specific duration. The metric allows businesses to evaluate if there are any bottlenecks in moving and shipping products on time and address them to improve warehouse management. Businesses can invest in an automated storage and retrieval system (ASRS) to improve throughput. An ASRS is a computer-controlled system that automatically stores and retrieves inventory from designated locations in the warehouse. It helps businesses improve throughput by:
- Reducing the time taken to pick and store products
- Eliminating the need for manually searching products and retrieving products automatically by either sending them directly to the worker or guiding them to the exact location
- Picking up multiple orders containing the same products at the same time to reduce the number of trips needed to pick and pack
- Optimizing inventory storage and ensuring the products are available for shipment at the right time
Time is money in the supply chain. ASRS helps businesses save time on manual tasks like picking up and ensuring the goods are shipped on time.
How Carte+ Can Help Businesses Beat Downturn?
According to McKinsey’s research, supply chain disruptions take almost 3.7 years on average to settle. At a time when quick delivery and ever-evolving market trends are becoming the new normal, businesses cannot afford to wait so long. While some situations are not within control, businesses can combat a few with technologies like warehouse automation systems.
At Cartesian Kinetics, we understand the complexities of the supply chain process. That’s why we have developed Carte+ to automate warehouse operations.
With Carte+, businesses can:
- Retrofit the solution with existing racks and high bay racks without making any changes to the floors
- Improve throughput by optimizing SKUs and enable pickers to pick at the highest efficiency
- Manage high demands during seasonal and peak periods by integrating the solution with warehouse management systems and existing workflows
To automate your warehouse processes and beat the competition, contact us.
