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The retail automation market will grow by more than 10% from 2024 to 2032, witnessing a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) with a valuation of over USD 25 billion by 2023.
Growth in automated intelligence technology will likely spur growth in the business by making ever more advanced and efficient systems possible.
A revolution in speed, precision, and scalability determines success and therefore holds new possibilities for the future of consumer goods warehousing.
From intelligent storage systems to advancements in material handling, automation can significantly provide an added opportunity for efficiencies and reduced errors and create warehouse functions around the realities of future marketplace demands.
Key Challenges in Consumer Goods Warehousing
- High Volume and Variety of SKUs: Managing a broad spectrum will require high-level stock management to optimize storage and reduce picking errors.
- Labor Shortages and Skill Gaps: A lack of skilled employees hinders operational efficiency, increases the occurrence and risk of inventory errors, and causes delays.
- Seasonal Demand Variance: Fluctuating demand patterns require a corresponding shift of resources in warehouse labor and inventory strategies at peak seasons.
- Supply Chain Disruption: Global and regional disruption (e.g., transport delay, shortage of raw materials, or even political events) could severely affect inventory and warehouse operations while requiring companies to design flexibility and risk management in their operating strategies.
- Sustainability and Carbon Footprint: The increase in sustainable pressure has resulted in warehouses not only consuming less energy but also reducing waste, in which case recovering green technologies is modelled towards keeping operational efficiency.
- Reverse Logistics: Challenges seem to be intensifying in the new world of managing returns efficiently, hence having strong systems for the reverse flow of products, refurbishing or recycling goods, and causing minimal impact on warehouse space and resources.
Common Requirements in Consumer Goods Warehousing
- Storage: Storage facilities are made to make more efficient use of space while providing easy access to the goods and often requiring storage shelving or appliances for racking or automated storing of varied products.
- Material Movement: mobile robots, Conveyors or forklifts with automatic guided vehicle (AGV) handling will make the transport of goods in the warehouse rapid and accurate.
- Palletization: Goods are palletized to make handling and storage easier and more efficient with the use of space while mitigating damage during transportation, owing to standardised pallet sizes, optimizing stacking efficiency.
- Picking: Picking processes like single or batch picking as well as wave picking is crucial in accurate speed as well as efficiency enhancement, while the reduction of errors is characterised by the integration of technologies such as barcode scanning, voice picking, or robotics.
- Sorting: Sorting systems are the main ones for quickly sorting and distributing items to their proper destinations or packing stations through automated sorting belts or manual means for high volumes.
Automation Solutions for Consumer Goods Warehousing
Below are the key automation solutions transforming consumer goods warehousing:
Storage Automation: Automated Storage and Retrieval Systems (ASRS)
Such ASRS systems which include the Mother-Child Shuttle, Carton Shuttle, and 4-Way Pallet Shuttle, stacker crane, multi level shuttle are very beneficial in making inventory retrieval and storage automation thereby less needing human labor or space optimization with a much maximized output of work.
Sorting Solution: Sorting Robots
Sorting robots such as Zippy and SortIE improve the speed and accuracy of the sorting process for consumer goods, reduce mistakes and manual labor, and adapt to different warehouse arrangements while scaling for a greater volume.
Material Movement Solution: Mobile Robots
Mobile Robots like Dynamo, Veloce, and Travect are efficient in transporting materials to and from production and at speed within the warehouse, all these while reducing human participation, and exposure to hazards, and improving inventory accuracy inside complex warehouse environments.
Palletization Solution: Person-to-Goods (PtG) Systems
PtG systems facilitate palletization by automating the processes of picking and packing and eliminating manual operations, eventually leading to higher-throughput material transfer, higher accuracy, and efficiency at material handling.
How Automation Solves Key Consumer Goods Warehousing Challenges?
- Enhanced Efficiency: Automation speeds up repetitive functions and makes smooth workflows free from bottlenecks. This, in the end, leads to accelerated order fulfilment and well-optimized throughput.
- Labor Reduction: Warehouses need fewer workers and significantly reduce labor costs as automated picking, sorting, and inventory tasks require fewer hands.
- Flexibility.: These systems are flexible, allowing scaling of operations in warehouses from one type of task to another and responding quickly.
- More Sustainable Operations: From conventional energy, savings are realized in terms of energy, space, and waste-all points to more sustainable operations in consumer goods warehousing.
- Increased Accuracy: Automation saves human error through the precision of inventory management; this leads to minimizing the chances of mistakes in order picking, sorting, and tracking.
- FIFO Method: Automated systems pick the old stocks before the new ones, leading to higher stock turnover and, thus, reduced risks of expired or obsolete stocks.
- Transport Damage Reduction: These robots are reliable in handling materials without any hasty or hurried actions. Thus economical, with very limited areas of much damage inflicted in the process of transportation or storage.
How Addverb Powers Automated Mixed-Case Palletizing for PepsiCo?
Situation: To ensure efficiency in warehouse operations, PepsiCo needed a solution for its 4th production plant in India, which is the largest and fully automated captive warehouse. Issues related to shipping inventory in big volume, storage and throughput capacity and dispatch systems for different distributors were some of the problems the company encountered. The movement of their system from manual to automated was the major focus.
Action: At Addverb we made a close study of all the manually operated sites of PepsiCo and associated with the company on all levels.
Automated Storage and Retrieval Systems, Mother-Child Shuttles, and Pick-by-Light systems were all designed within Addverb’s Warehouse Control System (WCS) as the base of the solution.
The main innovation that stands out was the outcome of the Dense Racking System modification, which tied custom aisles to the conversion of Rainbow Pallet. This allows for dynamic pick face allocation to improve, especially throughput, both during picking and put-away operations while still holding a mixed case palletizing.
Action: The installation of the automated mixed-case palletizing solution greatly optimized warehouse operations at PepsiCo.
This resulted in dense storage and high throughput, maximizing its use of constricted spaces, and automated the case-picking process.
Mother-Child Shuttle system integrated into storage and Rainbow Pallet formation comprised a unique solution that delivered an efficient system to meet the end-to-end operational improvement requirements for a compact 36,000 sq. ft. facility for PepsiCo.
Conclusion
Transformation of consumer goods warehousing is made possible through automation, addressing the challenges of high SKU volumes, labor shortages, and inconsistent demand.
Technologies such as ASRS, mobile robots, and automated palletizing systems streamline processes to achieve efficient, accurate, and sustainable operations while cutting labor costs and enhancing the management of inventory.
The beauty of these implementations is that they will evolve warehouses into greater adaptability, speed, and absence of faults as time progresses, to meet an even larger proportion of the consumers’ demands of the modern marketplace, paving the way for phenomenal efficiencies to come.
Contact us today, so we can help you with reducing costs while boosting accuracy and scaling your operations.
FAQ
What are the key challenges in consumer goods warehousing?
Managing high inventory turnover, timely order fulfillment, and space optimization are common challenges.
How does automation solve consumer goods warehousing issues?
Automation improves accuracy, speeds up operations, and enhances space utilization.
Why is real-time data crucial in consumer goods warehousing?
It boosts inventory visibility, demand forecasting, and decision-making.
Why is scalability vital for consumer goods warehousing?
It ensures the system can handle demand growth or seasonal spikes efficiently.
