by Warehouse Robotics Revolutionizing Fulfillment Process
With e-commerce growing exponentially each year, the demand placed on warehouse and fulfillment operations has never been higher. Companies are under intense pressure to fulfill orders quickly and accurately while keeping costs low. This is where warehouse robotics have become a game changer. Robotic systems like autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) and goods-to-person order pickers are allowing warehouses to massively increase throughput and productivity.
AMRs navigate the warehouse autonomously via algorithms, sensors, and machine vision to move inventory between locations without needing dedicated tracks or wires in the floor. This mobility allows AMRs to move loads flexibly around workers and other equipment. Major fulfillment centers now have fleets of over 100 AMRs transporting inventory throughout their facilities. Goods-to-person systems like robotic picking arms reach directly into storage locations and transfer bins, cases, and individual items directly to human workers’ pick zones, saving them immense time walking between storage aisles.
As more sensors, vision systems, and AI are incorporated, these warehouse robots are becoming increasingly Logistics Automation with human oversight gradually transitioning from active monitoring to more strategic roles. Critical processes like put-away, replenishment, inventory management, and sortation that were previously manual bottlenecks are now handled entirely by robotics in many facilities. This has led to multifold increases in picks per hour and space utilization of the facilities itself. The increased operational efficiency has also driven down costs significantly.
Automating Transportation and Delivery with Self-Driving Vehicles
Logistics Automation the last mile of logistics automation with self-driving vehicles offers immense potential to further streamline the delivery process while lowering costs. Several companies are actively working on autonomous delivery vehicles focused on last-mile logistics use cases. One approach involves self-driving trucks transporting goods from warehouses to designated drop-off hubs located on the outskirts of cities. At these hubs, small autonomous delivery vehicles like self-driving cargo vans and drones load up and undertake the “last mile” journey to deliver items directly to customers’ doorsteps.
Autonomous long-haul trucks are also being tested for intercity cargo transportation on major highways. This could significantly reduce driver costs and improve driver safety. Municipal fleets of self-driving shuttles and delivery vans are transporting goods between distribution centers and post offices in certain cities. The vehicles use HD maps, AI, computer vision and lidar to safely navigate urban environments without human intervention. Automating last-mile delivery solves major pain points like driver shortages while streamlining the entire order delivery process and enabling one-day and same-day shipping capabilities at scale. It’s expected that self-driving vehicles will handle a sizeable portion of B2C logistics within the next 5-10 years.
AI-Powered Inventory, Planning and Procurement Systems
AI is revolutionizing supply chain and logistics management by powering new generations of intelligent planning systems. These systems leverage advances in machine learning, predictive analytics, natural language processing and computer vision. They analyze diverse data sources like purchase histories, upcoming product launches, seasonality trends, supplier contracts, weather forecasts – to precisely predict demand signals and automatically replenish inventory. This ensures stock levels stay optimized for each product-market-time combination, minimizing stock-outs and overstocks. Automated replenishment also optimizes just-in-time supply strategies for both B2B and B2C settings.
Cutting-edge AI inventory management tools now analyze shelf images from stores taken by workers or surveillance cameras and alert suppliers about gaps and misplaced items in real-time. Logistics automation enables autonomous restocking far more quickly than manual monitoring. For procurement, AI parses supplier catalogues, RFPs, contracts and online data to identify ideal partners, renegotiate rates, optimize shipments and audits. It offers prescriptive recommendations on lead times, minimum order quantities, transportation modes best suited for each case. Overall, AI brings unprecedented intelligence to each aspect of an organization’s supply chain from procurement and inventory to production, distribution and returns – boosting profits, service levels and customer satisfaction significantly.
AI and Blockchain Transform Supply Chain Visibility and Traceability
A challenge facing many supply chains is lack of visibility into real-time location and status updates across the complex global network of partners, shipping lanes, ports and warehouses involved. Furthermore, traditional supply chain data is often siloed across systems and lacks a single source of truth. Blockchain and AI address both of these issues for enhanced transparency and traceability.
Blockchain distributed ledgers act as a shared, immutable record of each transaction and information exchange across the supply network. This could include POs, inventory levels, IoT-enabled sensor data, customs declarations, container movements – providing all participants a single synchronized view. AI algorithms monitor this distributed data and trigger actions or alerts based on programmed rules. For example, detecting delays, divergences from planned schedules and raising alerts about quality issues in real-time.
The combination of blockchain and AI also enables previously impossible capabilities like predictive quality management. By analyzing data on past defects, non-conformances, product recalls – AI tools can proactively identify risks, predict failures and recommend preemptive corrective actions to suppliers. The level of supply chain visibility, control and collaborative problem-solving this provides helps strengthen relationships with partners, meet compliance requirements and better serve evolving end customer needs. All in all, it drives significantly higher levels of resilience, agility and sustainability across operations.
Robotics, autonomous vehicles, AI, blockchain are revolutionizing nearly every function within logistics automation and supply chain systems. They are enabling unprecedented levels of efficiency, optimization, visibility and automation from warehousing to transportation and inventory management. The transformation is still unfolding but it’s evident that these technologies will eventually handle the bulk of operational workload, freeing up humans for more cognitive roles in strategy, innovation and customer relationships. Overall, automation is empowering the next generation of data-driven, customer-centric and responsive supply chain networks.
*Note:
1. Source: Coherent Market Insights, Public sources, Desk research
2. We have leveraged AI tools to mine information and compile it
