The challenge of finding and keeping warehouse workers in today's labor market has brought the necessity of warehouse robots into sharp focus. Check out this short video on the shift from a manual to an automated pick and pack environment at Staci Americas.
After shipping costs, labor is your biggest fulfillment-related expense. These days, reliable warehouse workers are hard to find and retain, and it’s costing more to keep them on the payroll.
How do you address some of these short- and long-term labor challenges?
One way is to introduce robotics to the warehouse. The Berkshire Grey survey found that, while only 13% of supply chain executives are using warehouse robots, 51% are planning to adopt the technology in the near future.
The benefits of warehouse robots include:
Robots also support a “do it right the first time” approach, which obviously eliminates the added labor required to correct mistakes. The screen on the bot clearly tells the associate what and how many items to pick and where the items can be found. It can even include an actual photo of the product on the screen to make it super-simple for the picker.
If there is an error, the bot will not move to the next pick location until the correct pick is confirmed.
Associates are not threatened by the robots; they actually appreciate the degree of efficiency and accuracy bots bring to eCommerce pick and pack services.
Their roles don't go away with robots; they simply change as robots handle the rote tasks that can be easily programmed.
Robots are not the answer for every fulfillment operation, according to Warzecha.
“The investment in robotics would be overkill in low-volume, slower-turn picking environments,” he says. “You want a 3PL partner that can take a modular approach to automating fulfillment – adding technology, in degrees, as sales and operational complexity increase.”
Would you like to explore how warehouse robots and other automation options can improve your order throughput while keeping costs in check? Contact Staci Americas to arrange a confidential discussion with one of our fulfillment operations specialists.