Whether your business warehouse is under tremendous pressure to meet growing order volumes quickly and accurately, adopting warehouse automation is the right way to address these, and the path to achieving this is clear thanks to those who have adopted automation before. Follow these 9 steps on the road to warehouse automation success and transform warehouse processes from manual to automated to optimize order fulfillment, increase employee satisfaction, and more. Automated three-dimensional warehouse
1. Thoroughly understand your current operations.
Before deploying warehouse automation, it's critical to objectively assess aspects of existing workflows to understand what works and what doesn't. Each step is recorded, cycle times are measured, and all bottlenecks are identified. Known warehouse pain points such as repetitive tasks, order picking, and inventory management are the main automation targets. Since you can't improve something you don't understand, start by looking at your entire warehouse operations. You should also now track productivity metrics (if you don't already have one) so you can compare them after automation.
2. Define your automation goals.
Automating a warehouse without a proper strategy will only lead to trouble, clearly define what you want to achieve with automation and be specific – the goal of "improving warehouse efficiency", while important, is too vague.
Instead, set measurable goals, such as:
Increase the picking speed....%
Shorten the training time....%
Reduce shipping errors.
Let your goals guide your technology selection process and implementation roadmap.
3. Choose a solution that meets your goals.
With the market flooded with conveyors, pickers, sorters, and robots (a**), it's no wonder that all of these options are paralyzing analytics, so it's critical to choose a warehouse automation technology that meets your needs directly. If speed is of the essence, the flexible A** allows your warehouse to move faster than ever. Easy-to-learn robotics can help reduce training requirements and encourage retention of existing workforces, pre-defining the features you must have to narrow down your options.
4. Plan all implementation and operating costs.
Any warehouse business that has deployed automation knows that this can require significant capital expenditures – unless you choose a solution that is offered "as a service" like a Robot-as-a-Service (RaaS) solution. With RaaS, the cost of automation for your facility shifts from capital expenditure (CapEx) (a major purchase you plan to use for years) to an ongoing operating expense (OpEx). A small initial investment means an easier budget approval process and reduces the time it takes you to get a return on your investment from years to months.
Identify all potential warehouse automation costs up front, including:
Initial hardware software purchase.
Facility renovation needs.
Integrate with existing infrastructure.
Employee training programs.
5. Involve your entire warehouse team from the start.
Nothing hinders technology implementation more than reluctant users, from warehouse managers to employees and more. The way to get your project on track is to get all employees on board and communicating from the start. Invite colleagues to provide input on warehouse automation to address any issues that may exist.
Provide your employees with concrete examples of why automation is critical to efficiency and job growth, including that it will help upskill them rather than replace them. At the same time, show how warehouse automation will reduce the physical burden on their roles.
6. Check out the warehouse automation solutions in action.
As you make your way down the path of warehouse automation, consider stopping along the way for help. In this case, this entails visiting the business that has deployed a warehouse automation solution and talking to the people there about how the solution can work for them. This will give you a first-hand understanding of the solution and how to implement it in your own warehouse.
7. Train, train and retrain your staff.
No automation can succeed without the support of warehouse employees. Think about it, people only use a new technology properly and happily if they understand it, so make 100% sure your colleagues understand the solution. Invest heavily in training all the employees who will be using the automation solution, and you may find that the warehouse automation technology you choose requires only a small amount of training time because it is so easy to use. If so, then your employees will be able to gain hands-on experience and be productive quickly.
8. Gradually increase with the improvement of indicators.
Start by using automation for targeted applications, such as mitigating labor-intensive routes or seasonal peaks (e.g., peak seasons). As your team gets used to it, slowly expand the application of the technology to more warehouse functions. Use measured pre- and post-analysis to confirm that you're responsibly moving toward key KPI improvements.
9. Continuous optimization based on real data.
Just like manual processes, your warehouse automation must evolve to deliver more benefits over time. Leverage dashboards and analytics tools to monitor the health of your solution in the warehouse and analyze usage patterns to identify opportunities to adjust processes or functions.