Mike Wilshaw
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With current trend analysis projecting a worldwide marketplace of between £46bn per annum by 2023 and annual growths of nearly 12%, now is the time to look at how automation could help your business.
Analysing Your Requirements
As with all products, no one size fits all and the same holds even more so when it comes to warehouse automation. With so many possible solutions available, picking the right one for your business is extremely important. With advances in person to goods and goods to person technology, picking the solution can yield considerable savings in cost and time.
Getting the Right Solution
Automation in the warehouse relies on a whole business solution and not just the purchase of new hardware. To obtain the best from any solution it’s important to look at the whole business model, including the supply chain for goods into your business and how to maximise your efficiencies from goods in door right through to customer delivery.
How will your local employment marketplace change over the next 4 years? Again critical in looking at any solution and often not considered in providing the right solution. Some solutions are more labour intensive than others, such as pick by voice. These solutions still bring increased throughput of goods through your business saving time and money and providing better data analysis to help your business grow.
Goods to person solutions can offer higher densities of storage and reduced pick times but may require changes to how your orders are processed to get the maximum out of a system. Batch order processing may be required to optimise the equipment but may not be right for your business and customer order profiles. Not understanding how your orders are processed can lead to significant reductions in orders being processed from any solution and needs to be understood by any solutions provider.
Final Thoughts
When considering such a potentially large investment into your business, isn’t it prudent to talk to a company with an unbiased outlook? Here at Warehouse Storage Solutions we don’t “shoehorn” a single solution into a business as we have access to the whole marketplace to provide the right ones for your business.
If you would like any further impartial advice on semi-automation or full automation solutions, please call us on 01423 819 057 or email sales@warehousestoragesolutions.com
