The Future of Warehouse Technology
The future of warehousing has arrived in facilities around the country. The technology used in modern storage facilities allows for improved productivity and greater efficiency. Before you dive into investing in the newest innovations in logistics and warehouse technology, find out which devices have real benefits for the present and which require more study for use in the future.
Jump To Sections:
- Benefits of Modern Technology in the Warehouse
- Game-Changing Examples of Warehouse Technology
- Future of Warehouse Technology
- Integrating Technology With Existing Equipment
Benefits of Modern Technology in the Warehouse
You know warehousing involves much more than just storing goods. With the rise in internet commerce, you may have already seen an increase in demand from your customers. Even if you don’t directly cater to e-commerce customers, you may store and ship goods that other e-commerce-connected companies need.
As the demand for your services increases, you will need ways to improve your efficiency and decrease times pulling products from shelves. Technological innovations may help you enjoy these benefits and others if you use them well.
1. Greener Operations
As companies become more aware of pollution and active in reducing their impact on the environment, they will work harder at developing greener technologies. You have some of these innovations in warehousing available today.
Making your warehouse more sustainable requires using fewer resources and making better use of the ones you already have. By implementing the latest in technology with your warehouse and throughout the supply chain you participate in, you can see savings in fuel costs and a reduction in waste your facility produces.
Instead of using gas-burning equipment and diesel delivery trucks, consider switching some to more efficient, cleaner-burning alternatives. Compressed natural gas and electric vehicles have become more available through improved technology, allowing you to reduce your reliance on standard fuels for your delivery vehicles and even forklifts.
The warehouse of the future will require less energy to run better quality lighting. Since lighting a distribution center accounts for an average of 30% of the energy used in the facility, choosing from the latest lighting options makes sense in money savings. With more energy-efficient choices such as LEDs that use less power and generate the same brightness, you don’t have to sacrifice your workers’ ability to see for saving money. Smart energy controls automate lighting, heating and air conditioning based on occupancy and time of day. These controls save you money on electricity while requiring less energy.
By embracing energy efficient warehouse technology, you save money, reduce emissions and can promote your facility as a more environmentally friendly operation.
2. Improve Worker Efficiency
Warehouses that embrace technology can do more with fewer workers. Futuristic technology works smarter and not harder, which gives innovations the name of smart warehouse technology.
Through automating various processes such as product storing and retrieval, modern warehouse systems allow people to do more with their time. The automation of systems also reduces the wear and tear on workers’ bodies that often lead to sick leave from muscular injuries and strains. Fewer sick days mean less downtime for your facility.
3. Greater Accuracy
One of the biggest concerns for warehouse managers is seeking ways to improve accuracy. Human order pullers will occasionally make mistakes, as is their nature as people. When using technology such as barcode readers or automated retrieval systems, the human element disappears, increasing the accuracy of orders.
Automated systems have no human input to cause errors, but even using barcode scanners can reduce errors caused by misreading package labels and prevent the wrong container from leaving the facility. By offering improved accuracy, technological innovations reduce the number of returns and restocking incidents that can sap productivity.
Greater accuracy for pulling orders is not the only area where precision in your facility will increase when you choose warehousing technology. Without human mistakes, your inventory will reflect what you have on the shelves. Without having as many human workers on the floor, you lower the chances of stock getting for stock to get lost, misplaced or stolen.
4. Increased Space Efficiency
Depending on where you operate, real estate prices may make the cost of another warehouse impossible. In such cases, you would benefit using more of the space you have through technological innovations.
Automated storage and retrieval systems allow you to stock your shelves higher and have narrower shelves than with human product pickers. One company implemented this system into their office instead of purchasing a second warehouse. As a result, the business saved 15% on fixed costs in rent savings.
Instead of building out, smart warehousing lets you build up to make the most of unused space in your facility. You get more storage space per square foot, increasing the efficiency of your facility while saving you from having to secure additional properties.
When you can do more with the space you have, you save the costs of purchasing or renting another building. Additionally, you won’t have to pay to heat, cool and light another building. The savings extend far beyond the initial price for another warehouse.
5. Easier Expansions
While new warehouse technology requires a significant investment, it also allows for easier changes in your facility in the future. Having a facility with both scalability and adaptability makes it easier to change with industry demands. Many automated systems require quick software upgrades to adapt to changes instead of installing completely new systems. This ability to adapt quickly will cut your downtime should you need to make upgrades to your warehouse in the future.
If your facility has busier seasons, automated systems allow for rapid scalability by making order retrieval faster or more in-bulk to respond to the more substantial demand. This option allows you to save from having to hire and train seasonal workers who may make more mistakes than permanent employees.
6. Faster Order Fulfillment
Using technological innovations such as automated storage and retrieval systems reduces lead times and get orders put together faster than using human product pullers. Automated systems make next to no mistakes (if any) and can operate without breaks 24/7. With faster turnaround times, you will stand out as a competitor in your field.
Reduced lead times also can happen thanks to the adaptability of automated systems, which can prioritize orders from specific clients, regardless of their placement in the queue. While first-in, first-out order placement and product retrieval has been the mainstay of the industry, prioritizing some customers allows you to charge a premium for the service, increasing your overall profits.
Game-Changing Examples of Warehouse Technology
Warehousing technology trends use several innovations to increase speed and accuracy while reducing costs and errors. Here are some of the trends you need to watch to decide if you want to integrate them into your facility.
1. Warehouse Management Systems
Warehouse management systems (WMS) are one of the most significant warehousing trends. While they’ve been in use since the 1990s, they have increased in their efficiency and accessibility. However, many warehouses still do not have an effective WMS in place and continue to rely on paperwork and old-fashioned operations.
A WMS makes running a warehouse more efficient by reducing wasted time, personnel and products. To get the maximum effect from one of these systems, combine it with the automated inventory control of a warehouse control system to create a warehouse execution system (WES).
Even if you’re not ready to install an automated storage and retrieval system, using WMS schedules your workers to pick parts faster than if they worked off paper orders. The software of the WMS creates the most efficient means of picking orders, which improves speed.
2. Automated Storage and Retrieval System
Automated storage and retrieval systems (AS/RS) already give benefits to warehouse managers around the country. These systems use pallet racking systems to stack products on shelves more effectively. With mobile racking, products can stack several layers deep, using even more space than traditional stocking systems.
Most modern warehouses have taller designs, 30 to 40 feet high or more, to reduce their real estate footprints without shrinking their interior space. To take advantage of the extra space, you need special shelving and retrieval systems. AS/RS can help you maximize the used space in your warehouse, even if you have a higher ceiling.
Using AS/RS can reduce the amount you spend on labor because 55% to 65% of a warehouse’s labor costs go to picking products. Automating the process can save on these labor costs since you won’t need to train workers for retrieving products. AS/RS may also save energy by operating 24/7, even in the dark.
If you want to make an AS/RS more efficient, combine its machinery with Industry 4.0 and sensors that schedule predictive maintenance. This type of care pulls the equipment and makes repairs and updates before it breaks down, reducing downtime and improving efficiency.
3. Warehouse Execution Systems
A warehouse execution system removes the need for physical paperwork by allowing data integration directly into a cloud-based system. Instead of using papers that they can quickly lose, workers input data onto tablets that save as soon as the information changes. Losing a single piece of paperwork with vital information could cost a company several hundred dollars. Immediately updating the system through digital data input could save you that cost.
No paperwork means your workers don’t need to spend time inputting information into a computer. Additionally, they won’t make mistakes caused by poor handwriting or damaged papers. Without printing out paper orders, you don’t have to spend as much money on printers, ink, paper and more. The cost savings increase even more if you had used carbon paper for multiple copies of order or picking forms since carbon paper frequently costs more than standard paper.
To achieve paperless operation, WES use barcodes and RFID tags to track inventory in your facility. With more accurate inventory counts, you will have fewer errors in fulfilling orders and less waste from missing products.
Integrating inventory control with WMS to create a WES makes your warehouse operate as efficiently as possible. If you choose lean operations or don’t feel ready to engage in full automation of your facility, you will still enjoy better productivity and less loss when you use WES.
4. Predictive Maintenance
Predictive maintenance uses sensors on devices to monitor the health and productivity of your equipment. When either level decreases, the system alerts the warehouse manager to schedule maintenance. In some cases, a WMS may automatically schedule service for the device, informed by the sensors.
Using predictive maintenance instead of waiting for a part to break down cuts on costly repairs of additional broken components. Using technology to schedule maintenance reduces the need for unnecessary services while still keeping your warehouse’s equipment operating at its peak.
As more warehouses integrate more technologically advanced and sophisticated machines, predictive maintenance should become more popular.
5. Autonomous Guided Vehicles
Autonomous guided vehicles (AGV) may rely on wires in the floor or another means of guidance to get them to their designated places. Many warehouses today use these robots instead of automated conveyor systems as an option that requires less space and still allows for people and forklifts to operate. These can pick up products from AS/RS or a human picker, making them an ideal bridge between older and futuristic technologies.
E-commerce giant Amazon stocks its warehouses with these AGVs to move products picked by people to other parts of the warehouse. The company had 45,000 robots in 2016 in addition to its human operators. In many instances, Amazon requires humans to pick and stow products as those tasks in the company’s facilities require better cognitive flexibility and fine motor skills than the robot staff can provide.
Newer versions of AGV no longer require built-in systems to control their routes. They use infrared, ultrasonic, LIDAR, radar or cameras to avoid obstacles and learn the most effective paths through the warehouse. While currently less popular than the guided models, these upgraded AGV devices stand to become integral parts of warehouse technology in the future for use in container retrieval or picking individual units — tasks that Amazon still has humans do.
Future of Warehouse Technology
No one can predict the future perfectly, but current trends that could become more widely accepted with some slight changes stand to become essential elements of warehouses in the future. From mobile warehouse technology that makes efficient use of wearable tech to methods of connecting customers with products even faster, here are some of the top technology innovations poised to be future warehousing standards.
1. Wearable Tech
Soon, physical limitations will no longer sideline human workers in warehouses. Wearable technology of the future includes robotic exoskeletons that prevent muscle strains and back damage by augmenting workers’ natural strength with robotics.
Even as technology in robotics continues to improve, some tasks will still require the fine motor skills of people. For those tasks, exoskeletons give humans greater strength and endurance while moving inventory. Such devices can prevent overuse injuries and allow older workers to continue in their roles instead of aging out.
As robotic systems, these exoskeletons can even collect data about the workers’ efforts. Researchers can use this information in the future to improve the robotic system’s operations to serve better the person wearing it.
2. Smart Glasses
While consumers did not accept Google Glass as much as the industry anticipated, warehouse workers may soon use similar devices that allow them to retrieve data files to the surface of their glasses. Smart glasses let workers keep their hands free while looking up information they need.
These glasses can also become part of augmented reality systems used in warehouses. The glass surface can display anything from repair diagrams or videos to a highlight of the location of the package a worker needs to retrieve.
Unlike some other technology systems, smart glasses require no infrastructure beyond Wi-Fi to support their data. Essentially, these glasses act like smartphones that display the information on their lenses.
3. 3D Printing
Today’s 3D printing technology, available since 2010, allows for the on-demand production of computer-designed products. While typically used for smaller businesses and applications, such as prototypes, the technology continues to develop.
As 3D printing gets faster and can use more materials, the future of warehouses may be facilities dedicated to storing materials for this technique. Customers can completely customize products that the facility prints on demand.
Since warehouses will need fewer goods on hand, they can decrease in size, saving money in rent and labor. Integrating 3D printing into product storage and distribution offerings will turn future warehouses into multifunctional centers. Conversely, smaller warehouses may become neighborhood staples to deliver customized products to people within hours instead of days.
4. Machine-to-Machine Communication
Warehouses in the future will use their various systems in tandem with each other. Orders can automatically signal the AS/RS to retrieve a box, which it delivers to an AGV to take to the distribution point. Sensors on these machines will tell each other where the devices are at any given time.
Sensors in machinery can also signal when devices need attention. Predictive maintenance will become commonplace in the future when all devices have monitoring sensors on them. These sensors will measure when the equipment needs care and send a signal to schedule a maintenance service. All this will occur automatically without a human knowing until the service person receives the schedule notification.
As technology progresses, machines may even be capable of repairing themselves or each other, removing the need to notify maintenance staff and allowing the facility to continuously operate 24/7.
5. Real-Time Flow Monitoring
Taking into account big data and analytics, real-time flow monitoring will automate complex planning processes and logistics in the future. This system allows for improved warehouse automation and adaptability to unplanned conditions.
For example, if a worker does not come in, the system finds ways to reallocate those employees present to make up for the absence. Another way to use this type of system is if a snow delay keeps a truck from making its scheduled delivery. The system will plan workers around the setback and determine where to store the goods from the delivery most efficiently. Prior information about the products’ movements will help the system to know whether to instruct workers to store it in the back of the facility for only occasional use or near the front for frequent pulling from the shipment.
The technology for such a system already exists, but thus far, it has yet to enter into major use in the warehousing industry. The increase in productivity and efficiency, though, make such a use of analytics almost certain for the warehouse of the future.
Integrating Technology With Existing Equipment
Now, the most innovative warehouses best combine existing equipment with newer technologies. With all that technological possibilities out there the reality we want to communicate is that you don’t need to have a smart warehouse to see improvements in productivity. The best warehouse technology has always been reliable equipment. Long-lasting, durable machinery in your warehouse that can integrate with technology gives you a facility that bridges the gap between old and new without giving up the reliability of your existing equipment for the unknown of the latest innovations.
Before considering all of the latest technology make sure you have a warehouse equipped with time-tested, durable equipment — the knowledge that your equipment will last reduces downtime and the need for additional training. For trusted equipment to outfit your warehouse explore Cherry’s selection prior to trying the latest technological trends in your facility.
