Investment in Warehouse Automation

Welocme back readers, This is Dharunanand R pursuing my MBA second year from Amrita School of Business, Coimbatore. In this week of Blog let's see about "Investment in Warehouse Automation"

Warehouse automation is predicted to become an increasingly desirable choice to the manual alternative over subsequent few years. But that doesn’t directly indicate a high likelihood of investment in these technologies. However, when asked about the likelihood of warehouse automation investment over subsequent three years, 60 percent of respondents indicated it had been “very likely” while a further 19 percent considered it “likely” (the remainder chose “somewhat likely” or “not at all likely”).

So broad-based investment activity is expected as well. The next logical question is “Why is warehouse automation being viewed in such a positive light?” Our findings indicate that changes in the operating environment; such as labor costs, labor shortages, and increased throughput requirements; are the primary influential factors. Meanwhile, our findings also suggest that advancements in automation, such as lower costs and scalability improvements, are supporting factors.

Generally speaking, emerging technologies are not widely installed, but adoption is growing at a rapid pace (or has potential to grow at a rapid pace). Our survey results reflect this dynamic. The percentage of respondents likely to take a position in these emerging warehouse automation technologies within subsequent 3 years is lower in aggregate than the responses to the established technologies, but still very substantial. Furthermore, a bigger percentage expect to take a position in 1-3 years than within subsequent 12 months.

A full 49 percent of respondents expected to invest in shuttle system-robot hybrid solutions (the question was designed to measure intention for investment in solutions such as Exotec, Attabotics, Fabric, etc. However, it likely captured intention for investment in other sorts of hybrid solutions as well). It is found that  this response is especially impressive, given the present nascency of those solutions on the market. Also surprising was the substantial expectations for adoption of robotic case picking. 

One 3PL respondent stated their forthcoming investment during this technology is to support case level mixed pallet configurations for retailers doing omni-channel replenishment from store location. This use case, and other needs for mixed pallets, are likely in higher demand than I had anticipated. Finally, autonomous mobile robotics (AMR), such as Locus Robotics and 6 River Systems, are on practitioners’ radars for near-future adoption. Zone-based AMR, like Geek+ and GreyOrange, also are being given due consideration