In my last post, I shared common objections to the extensive use of automation, particularly within warehouse operations. Modex 2020 featured several innovative companies which are adopting a different course of action in solving the industry’s labor shortage problem by making the individual picker more productive.

Much of the buzz at Modex concerned the coming-of-age of Autonomous Mobility Robots (AMRs). These small robots are programmed to follow paths through the facility or shadow certain employees in order to relieve them of the need to carry as much material. A swarm of these robots in a warehouse, for example, would eliminate the need for pallets and much of the MHE within the facility. Aside from offering the potential to reduce picking labor, these robots also have the advantage of being small enough to be readily demonstrated to attendees.

AMRs, however, do nothing to deal with the major driver of poor labor productivity in a warehouse: the batch release process. Nearly all warehouses operate on push principles. Orders drop in during the course of the day, but because trucks tend to be loaded and deliver overnight, operations are divided into receiving and replenishment during the day and picking, sorting, and loading at night. Carriers show up at the warehouse dock throughout the morning and are typically unloaded as soon as possible to avoid fees. This tends to jam up the dock by mid-morning. Receiving inspection is completed, slots found for the inbound product, and the putaway team works relentlessly to clear the dock, especially in non-flowthrough buildings, so that the outbound fulfillment operation can function later in the day. MHE is usually shared between shifts, so if putaway isn’t completed in a timely fashion, there may not be enough for bulk pickers to do their jobs at the start of the shift.

In most warehouses, a supervisor is dedicated to releasing orders to be picked in some rational fashion, aided by the warehouse control and warehouse management software systems. Without solid prioritization algorithms and frequent updates, the batches will be too large and items picked which are not ready to be loaded onto the trailer. These wind up sitting on the outbound dock, taking up space and hindering movement until sorters process the pallets for shipment and loaders place finished pallets in their proper place within the trailer. This latter operation often doesn’t happen because picking usually isn’t completed on time for some trailers to pull out, chiefly because some item hasn’t been properly replenished.

The flow of material through the warehouse, then, is crucial in ensuring on-time delivery of orders. Some companies have figured out that this push process is the root of the problem. If we must load products in a certain way by a set time into the trailer, it stands to reason that we should strive to load the first truck which needs to leave first, and the product which should be in the front of the trailer (the last pallet to be delivered) first. Treating trailer positions in similar fashion to warehouse locations enables this to be done consistently. With multiple trailers being loaded simultaneously, we need to leverage warehouse software to process changes in near-real-time so that pickers will be assured of always working on the next most important pick. Doing this causes the flow of material through the warehouse over time to look less like the tide coming in and rolling out and more like a steady flow. Steady flows are far more efficient.

Operational efficiency may be further improved by getting beyond the walls of the warehouse to encompass upstream carriers and the warehouse yard, even using GPS and geofencing to guide delivery drivers. One of the most innovative companies at Modex was Yard Management Solutions, which does just this by providing full visibility of material even when loaded on a trailer. Because their software allows carriers to self-schedule dock doors at the receiving facility via a mobile app, the warehouses using it immediately free up at least one worker (who otherwise would be using Excel to manage dock door appointments).

Other companies boasted of sophisticated algorithms to consistently restack priorities within batches and send them to picker’s voicepick, smartglass, or RF scanners. At any given moment, a picker needs to know what they’re supposed to be picking right now and where they are going next. Software has now gotten to the level where it can reliably calculate and communicate the next best pick to the appropriate picker, greatly reducing travel time.

All of these innovations serve to enable Lean in warehouse operations, which in turn will reduce lead times and improve order accuracy and on-time delivery. Moreover, no monuments are created to impede material flow using such tools. The inherent flexibility in the approach creates resilience in the face of significant spikes and troughs in demand. This represents a better solution for many companies due to the inherent volatility in orders as the company scales.

Remember the old quality adage: “If you automate a bad process, you’ll just get more defects faster.”