The warehouse economy is rapidly expanding, with new job opportunities appearing every month. Finding suitable candidates, on the other hand, has remained difficult. Fortunately, many warehouses have devised robust solutions to their production, operations, and labor challenges. Here are some of the leading trends in warehouse automation and management:
- Warehouse Robotics
An increasing number of warehouses and delivery centers have adopted robotic autonomous forklifts, thanks to their abilities to lower labor costs, boost profits, and improve workflows. As technology advances, return on investment (ROI) calculations are becoming more favorable than ever.
2. Warehouse Gamification
Many people in the manufacturing and warehousing sectors are struggling to hire skilled staff, which has led some warehouse operators to devise new strategies like warehouse gamification to motivate current and prospective workers.
Warehouse gamification refers to the process of converting traditionally boring warehouse tasks into a game with incentives. Gamifying the picking process could involve awarding points to employees who complete the most assemblies at their station or fill the most orders. What kind of tasks are gamified is up to the manufacturers, but they can leverage available programs and dashboards to apply these new tools. Some people even believe that warehouse gamification will transform the interaction between humans and robots into a collaborative game. But the main purpose is to make the warehouse and work environment a safe environment that successfully combines human labor and automation.
3. Automated Picking Process
Picking is one of the most tedious warehouse activities, requiring more effort and hours than any other aspect of warehouse operations. Moving from one aisle to another and commodity to commodity consumes a lot of production time. However, picker robots can help alleviate this situation.
Automated picker robots collect products and deliver them to a central area, where human workers can fulfill orders much more quickly. Separating the traveling task from the picking task boosts productivity significantly.
4. The Internet of Things (IoT)
For warehouse automation to be as effective as possible, different moving parts must constantly communicate with one another. This means AGVs and AMRs, inventory, warehouse management systems, human employees, and other systems must all be in sync for automated operations to run as smoothly as possible.
The Internet of Things (IoT) can facilitate this process by linking all systems and devices and ensuring they are in sync while also collecting important operational data. This allows users to see everything at a glance, from inventory and production levels to shipments going in and out. To help achieve maximum operational efficiency, everything in your warehouse will be traceable and coordinated.
Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) is one technology that makes good use of IoT capabilities. It involves attaching an RFID tag to individual packages or entire pallets to facilitate automatic item tracking. RFID offers the promise of significantly increased visibility into your inventory with such capabilities.
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