There are hundreds of SKUs and palettes in a warehouse, as well as selectors, leaders, and forklifts.
Coordinating product receipt and shipments as well as touchpoints in between is key for efficient supply chain operations. Companies conduct this orchestra by warehouse management systems.
Warehouse Management System
No other location in the supply chain provides more opportunities for positive change than the warehouse you manage. Imagine knowing the exact location of your entire inventory in real-time, from receiving to shipping. Consider faster movement, more precise order preparation, and no shipping mistakes. Recognize how much money you could save each month on both the staging area and labor.
Receiving and putting away is the backbone of warehouse operations, optimize your receiving process to measurably improve accuracy, dramatically decrease errors, and gain visibility. Increased visibility improves reverse logistics making sure return goods are handled quickly.
With barcodes and RFID labels, and rugged handheld devices, you empower your operators to capture critical information quickly and efficiently.
The warehouse management system directs the warehouse activities in order to enhance picking accuracy, load accuracy, on-time dispatch, and secure product traceability. All key metrics in measuring a distribution center’s efficiency and compliance.
The New Warehouse Operations
After the turbulent year 2021, the supply chain and warehouse are bracing for another year full of new local and global challenges. The impacts of the pandemic, the consequences of climate change, plus skilled labor and material shortages are causing the industry to utilize major risk-mitigation strategies.
Crucial steps in building the business’s resilience will be the deployment of new technologies, the adoption of data-driven agile operating models, and continuous innovation.
Following are the trends that will significantly shape the supply chain and warehousing in 2022.
The Omnichannel Logistics
Technology is transforming the way we shop, the omnichannel revolution is changing the face of retail, the consumer can make purchases however they want and whenever they want. This means logistics must keep pace. With e-commerce booming, social commerce rising, and the growing importance of reverse flows, omnichannel logistics are becoming the norm.
Hybrid order picking strategies, real-time process management, and sustainable operating models will take precedence over the upcoming period.
Reverse Logistics
Handling complaints, returns, and reverse flow management smoothly is vital to both customer satisfaction and cost optimization. The importance of reverse flows will continue to increase with the launch of recycling and reuse initiatives and the transition to a circular economy.
This gets smoothen by implementing artificial intelligence (AI) in it as it will save a ton of time and money involved as well. This will indeed lead to optimizing the productivity of the business.
Robotization
The advent of robots heralds a transformation in material flow management. New requirements for warehousing flexibility and efficient use of space are accelerating robotization. The robots such as AMRs can dynamically adapt to changes in the warehouse environment and to shifting patterns.
A robotic fleet can transform a standard warehouse into an automated warehouse that’s super-efficient and cost-saving and keeps human employees from getting injured on the job. Robots can move across the floor, pick up packages, hook onto rails on shelving units and climb vertically.
It can be mounted directly on a standard pallet rack at any working facility and automate all package or case handling from receiving to shipping. It is also capable of detecting obstacles and easily navigating around them.
Data-Driven Warehouses
Every year the enterprise’s data grows exponentially and changes constantly, the traditional data pipelines can no longer keep up with the sheer volume of data and building data warehouses requires time, effort, and money.
Data-driven Supply chains and warehouses are striving for dynamic, sustainable, and flexible logistics operations. Real-time data processing and analytics propel the transformation to data-driven warehousing and supply chain operational strategies.
By layering the right analytic techniques and tools over your existing information systems you can begin collecting and analyzing your supply chain data. Creating a radar for your organization that identifies both issues and opportunities in advance. Instead of being reactive, you can migrate to a proactive and eventually a predictive approach.
Conclusion
To sum up, there have been new technology trends that are transforming the overall work operation of warehouses and making the supply chain more efficient, effective, and proactive. With the automation of warehouses, the businesses related to supply chain management will also get plenty of benefits in the coming future. As these trends smoothen the complexity involved in warehousing from a very deep level.
Are you looking to automate your warehouses? If yes so please feel free to contact us at support@aeologic.com
