Drones in Supply Chain

 Hello everyone,

  I am Aswith Krishna Asok pursuing MBA in Amrita School of Business, Coimbatore. Recently I came across an article about the use of Drones in Supply Chain and here are some of the insights that I gathered.

Airobotics who is a drone manufacturer has described having drones as a limitless aerial perspective which has endless application in mining, oil, gas, agriculture, and also other industrial facilities. Drones in warehouses are mainly used for accelerating inventory counting, optimizing the paths across the warehouses by pulling inventory, and also improving worker safety.

Scanning the inventory especially on high shelves is faster with the help of the drones scanning barcodes since it is safe because it eliminates the actual need for the workers to scale industrial shelving. Drones used in warehouses are for providing better accuracy by eliminating the human error, reduce the human labor cost, and also minimize the cut-down workplace injuries. Wal-Mart is testing drones for using inventory tracking.

Drones are also being used in the surveillance for performing the facility and inspecting the warehouse safety. They were used for inspecting the cargo ships since they are easier and also faster to maneuver the workers especially on the outside of the hull. Drones are also being used in railways for inspection which helps to cut down operations interruptions and also increases safety.

Nowadays drones are also being used in the food logistic some of the trials undertaken are Alphabet which is Google’s parent company, likewise has FAA approval for delivering food in Virginia and Uber eats has been testing drone food delivery in high-density urban areas.

Last-mile delivery was very much problematic and expensive and drones are a natural fit for getting packages to customers in the last mile delivery. UPS has been approved by the FAA and also the transport department for delivering the packages with the help of drones. Wal-Mart has been filling a lot of drones patents in the last few years. Amazon has recently announced the opening of physical locations having some referring to these all stores as the drones airport