Mobile technologies aren’t the only tools you should be giving your workers access to, though.Īugmented reality will help workers pinpoint precise inventory locations during picking actions, which improves fulfillment speed and accuracy. (My colleagues and I will talk more about how to choose the right mobility solutions for your warehouse in upcoming blogs here on Your Edge) And they alert workers immediately if a customer cancels an order so they can abort order fulfillment and save both the customer and their supply chain partners the hassle of managing unnecessary returns. They do all of this with a form factor and user experience that is intuitive and productive. They empower inventory control workers to capture accurate stock counts. They tell workers exactly how to pack an item and sort items for shipping. These new tools can enable workers to see exactly what they need to pick or put away by incorporating images into the workflow. They are perhaps the best way to attain near-immediate efficiency and productivity gains. These devices are akin to the mobile technologies used in workers’ personal lives and can be on-boarded in a matter of hours, if not minutes. In fact, there is a host of mobile tools, utilities and applications – handheld touch computers, rugged tablets, even printers – that can be used to automatically capture, analyze and display data in a way that’s far more familiar and intuitive for today’s workers. While legacy mobile tools and warehouse management system (WMS) software can be notoriously difficult to learn and use, newer devices and software are much easier to learn and use. A significant part of the on-boarding process is training and familiarizing new hires with the mobile technologies they will need to use in the course of their work. The Role of Robotics, RFID, Locationing Technologies and More on the Warehouse FloorĪccording to our latest Warehousing Vision Survey, the average time spent getting new employees up to full productivity is 4 to 6 weeks. The investments most apt to deliver the desired return? Technologies that augment human labor. Given that over three-quarters of warehouse operators will need to be able to fulfill same-day delivery orders by 2023, they will need to continue to adapt to and re-optimize around new market requirements for customer service. But warehouse operators are going to have to pick up the pace on their technology investments a bit more if they want to capture their edge in the “now economy”: while 80 percent of respondents to our Warehousing Vision Study say that implementing new technology is important to stay competitive, 75 percent say that they are slow to implement new devices and technologies. Together, these technologies can work fast to help improve individual and team productivity, while achieving workflow conformity. And, yes, this includes robotics such as co-bots, too. These include the mobile computing, printing, barcode scanning, RFID solutions that you already have deployed on the warehouse floor or loading dock today as well as more advanced augmented reality (AR), Internet of Things (IoT) and automation technologies. There is, however, a way to improve inventory management and speed up fulfillment processes without changing so much or moving so fast that you compromise quality or experience downtime: pair workers with technologies that supplement and enhance their skill sets. With no relief in sight from the current labor constraints, warehouse operators need a way to augment their workforce in order to preserve and, ideally, improve productivity. The problem is that labor is increasingly difficult to find and just as difficult to retain in many markets around the world, as I mentioned in my last blog. They need more people receiving, picking, packing and loading goods if they are to keep up with the rising order volume. That’s a whopping 265 percent increase from 2014! No wonder warehouse operators are so eager to close the gap in their workforces. ECommerce is expected to be a $4.9 trillion market by 2021.
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