To be precise, automation helps you view better. Without automation, you can only guess. You guess to either understock or overstock. In both the scenarios, you lose customers and profit.
Here are those 3 easy ways in which automation helps remove inventory bottlenecks and transform your business.
- Spot Inventory on its tracks
Guessing low carries the risk of accumulating excess stock which could later become obsolete. You witness a chain reaction of a downward spiral.Excess inventory eats up into valuable warehouse space. This drives up operating costs related to managing and housing them. Once again you end up making a loss on materials that you shouldn’t have acquired in the first place.
Guess What? Automation doesn’t let you guess. On getting RFID tagging or the barcode scanners. Companies have real time update on what inventory is available 24/7, 365 days. All the incoming and outgoing inventory get serialized. This information is accessible on the desktop or mobile devices in any part of the world. When the stock reaches the critical level it sends you an alert and will be proactive to order more.
Inventory location is crucial. An oversight can multiply inefficiencies bringing your warehouse to a grinding halt. This will only increase the cost.
Not having a single integrated view of where to find every item, pickers have no choice but to guess. This amounts to longer time searching for the items that need to ship out. Slowing the loading process. Creating a backup in labor allocation and dock door scheduling.
Now, automated systems give graphical maps that point the exact location of all the items. This time, you witness a chain reaction of an upward spiral. Pickers save time, orders fulfilled faster and customers are happy. Every warehouse worker fulfills more orders thus saving on labor. Automation also improves your warehouse layout. This allows business to reduce the amount of space to operate with a profit. It can analyze current and projected data, this includes shipping, receiving and inventory levels. To design a layout that helps achieve greater efficiency and make the best use of available space. The best plan will take into account your process flow. The different equipment used for a style of racking as well about moving the stock around.
Picking is one of the most laborious tasks in a warehouse.
The cost by some estimates exceeds 50 percent of the total operating expenses.
Warehouses following manual processes don’t have a common route to pick items for shipment. This adds unnecessary time and cost to the process.
With an optimized warehouse layout. An automated system can speed up picking by figuring common routes that save time. Also with system directed pick/put-away, the routing is easy to automate. This brings down the wear and tear both on your equipment and the labor force.
The other major benefit is reducing the number of “touches” needed to fulfill each order. In a warehouse with manual processes, it’s common to see a worker pass a pick ticket or other documentation through many hands. The picker passes it to the checker who in turn passes it to the stager who in turn passes it to the loader and so on.
Automated warehouse system with barcode and RFID technology eliminates this redundancy. In fact, each item, in a seamless manner with least human help checks itself in at every stage of the process. Meanwhile, the warehouse managers have real-time visibility on the actual state of all inventory.
Say no to paper shuffling or blind spots. With a well-designed and effective integrated warehouse management solution. It’s possible to manage your facility with greater precision.
Leave a Comment