Warehouse Management System Automation in 2020: What to expect?

The automated warehouse system is helping companies to boost their warehouse process efficiencies. Browse the blog to understand how automated warehouses certainly are a boon for modern businesses.

Business process automation, also called digital transformation or business automation, is embracing most of the industries gradually . Based on Digital Trends Report 2019 by Adobe, integrated technology infrastructure is critical for successful customer experience warehouse design consultants Georgia USA. The report further reveals that businesses are employing Artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities for business process automation.

A warehouse management system isn't any exception because it directly affects the performance of the supply chain and thus plays a substantial role in ascertaining the grade of customer experience. Therefore, when considering warehouse management software in 2020, it is vital to think about the advantages of warehouse automation and the technologies stack that donate to building an automated warehouse system.

Warehouse automation will critically impact the capabilities of 3PL companies, warehouse operators, transport companies, and distribution centers in 2020. Before discussing the advantages of automated warehouses for different stakeholders, let's begin by understanding the concept of warehouse management system automation.

What's Warehouse Management System Automation

Because the name suggests, an automated warehouse system is just a congregation of technologies like robotics process automation, artificial intelligence, automated storage and retrieval systems (ASRS) and autonomous mobile robots combined with warehouse management system (WMS) that replace human efforts smartly while increasing the efficiency of the warehouse by leaps and bounds.

Warehouse automation intends to decrease the expense and time committed to manual labor as a result of which inventory moves slowly. Moreover, manual movement of goods is obviously vulnerable to errors and malfunctions that affect resource efficiencies. It is possible to control value leakage by reducing the amount of touchpoints, as goods move in just a warehouse. Like, Alibaba-affiliate Cainiao has opened a warehouse in China with 700 automated guided vehicles for parcel pick-up and delivery within the warehouse. By leveraging automation in the warehouse, Alibaba targeted to cope with Singles Day demand in 2019.

 How Warehouse Management System Automation Removes Bottlenecks

The worthiness of an automated warehouse coupled with a reliable warehouse management system, can't be underestimated. An absolutely automated warehouse addresses multiple challenges faced by modern warehouses in the current context, where they've to process tens of thousands of orders in a day. The significant problem is to cut back the fee while at once improving productivity. This could sound simple, but could be a daunting task in a warehouse spanned in thousand square feet and have a huge selection of employees.

Moreover, it can be dangerous and unsafe for employees to just work at a quicker speed to generally meet the expectations. The safety of the employee is equally important, and a hazardous work environment can demand long term consequences.

Warehouse automation can solve such problems while affecting the bottom-line of the business. Like, Goods-to-person technologies (GTP) pick items and bring them to workers in the warehouse mapped on WMS integrated with ERP. AS/RS is also a picking technology that retrieves and stores items back to their place automatically. Pick-to-light systems include an LED display guided mechanism that tells the operator to select the best item and scan it. Robots replace human efforts and are far more accurate and faster. Additionally, warehouse automation allows allocating human resources in management and planning work. Robots and automatic mechanisms can simply handle the excess workload without straining the human capacity, thus ensuring a secure work environment.

Automated warehouse systems are gaining popularity in business space, as more and more companies will anticipate improving the procedure efficiencies by incorporating advanced technologies in 2020.

Now it is clear that automation is the best solution to all or any challenges; let's now explore the concrete advantages of an automated warehouse system.