Why You Need Warehouse Management Automation

If your warehouse operations meet your goals and are within budget, but you don’t use a warehouse management system, or any sort of warehouse automation, your eyes probably roll when you’re told you ‘need’ either one.

But that doesn’t mean they aren’t necessary. At least if you want to achieve goals that you may not have considered. Or sales targets you don’t think are possible. Or cost reductions where you thought no more were possible. And if you read this article far enough, you’ll find out how to do all that, and still not automate your warehouse management.

Why You Should Automate Your Warehouse Management

For our purposes, automating your warehouse management means implementing and applying smart technologies in managing your warehouse. These can include warehouse management systems, finger scanners, automated picking tools, automated guided vehicles, automated inventory control systems and, ultimately, tying them all together with IoT implementation.

Here are just a few benefits of warehouse management automation.

1. Improved Personal Safety

If personal safety is the number one priority in your warehouse, then you need to automate. If you analyze the circumstances around incidents that resulted in injury, there’s a good chance that they were due to manual operations. This includes chronic issues, like repetitive strain injuries and accidental injuries.

2. Less Human Error

If you want to minimize the costs of your warehouse operations, then you need to automate. Your warehouse staff are under pressure to meet targets and you may have high turnover rates. Both of those scenarios result in costly human error. These can be incorrectly picked shipments and lost or damaged goods.

3. Streamlined Throughput

If you must reduce the logistics of moving materials through your warehouse, you need to automate. Automating your warehouse can mean streamlining supply chain process even outside of your physical premises. Imagine your suppliers knowing exactly when you need stock and delivering so you never see another stock out.

4. Optimize Your Warehouse Layout

If it’s not an option to add costly warehouse space, you need to automate. Warehouse automation can tell you the best places for your inventory and stock to suit your operations.

5. Improve Forecasting

If accurate forecasting is important to your business, you must automate. In addition to including your supply chain partners to keep you well stocked, just in time too, warehouse automation can keep you well prepared for what comes next. And that will even make you more prepared for the new normal of business disruption.

6. Increase Customer Satisfaction

If your business strives to meet customer expectations for ever increasing order fulfillment speeds and accuracy, you must automate. This is perhaps the biggest competitive advantage of warehouse management automation. One reason for that is the sooner you automate, the sooner you get to apply all the automation advantages in making your customers happier. And that will attract new ones. New ones that wouldn’t be there if you wait to automate because they would have already gone to your competitors.

Outsource Your Warehouse Management Automation

If warehouse automation still isn’t in the cards for you, but you would like to get all its advantages, logistics and supply chain specialists like PiVAL are the answer. Let us stay on top of the warehouse automation technology game while you just take care of business.