43 www.drivesncontrols.com June 2025 SMART WAREHOUSES n A pick-and-mix approach can bring agility to warehouses Competitive pressures on margins combined with ever greater expectations from customers on service, product choice and speed of delivery, place a heavy and growing burden on the fulfilment function and its supporting intralogistics infrastructure. Fulfilment now needs to be faster, more efficient and infinitely flexible, capable of dealing with constantly changing product profiles and more frequent peaks. A capability to leverage availability, service and costs across slick omini-channel operations is increasingly in demand. And the need for easily scalable technologies is essential in facilitating growth and securing future performance. Set against these high demands on performance, manual processes are becoming increasingly difficult to support. Faced with escalating labour costs and a shrinking labour pool, businesses are looking to automation to build in agility, increase responsiveness and keep competitive. But how should SMEs best approach a transition to, or an upgrade in, warehouse automation? How do you ensure the most appropriate technology is deployed, offering the flexibility and scalability needed, with the fastest ROI? Taking a wrong step at the outset can restrict your options and, ultimately, lead to sub-optimal outcomes. There are two common approaches. The first is “solution dependent”. A prospective buyer can be tempted by a technology that looks appropriate and simply approach the manufacturer or vendor for advice. This may work out well, but there is a danger that you are limited to the vendor’s products, imposing a major constraint on the design. This approach tends to be limited in scope and often fails to flex for future needs, locking clients into systems that are difficult to upgrade or integrate with new technologies. The best outcomes result from allowing your operational requirements to define the best possible system, and then selecting and integrating the most appropriate and costeffective technologies available. It's too easy to be sold a system that may work OK, as a compromise, but doesn’t necessarily offer the best result – falling short on flexibility, scalability or performance. What’s missing is independent informed thinking, combined with the freedom to choose best-of-breed technologies. An alternative is to adopt a “solutionagnostic”approach, where an independent integrator chooses the most appropriate technology for the task. There are many advantages to this. Firstly, and most importantly, being independent means that the integrator’s recommendations relating to technologies and potential suppliers are unbiased, and are not determined by the need to sell a proprietary product. A good integrator with strong software capabilities can bring together the latest and most advanced technologies for the task, producing a bestin-class installation. Automation can offer a host of possible technologies for warehouse processes ranging from goods-received, storage and orderpicking, to packing, sorting and despatch. Fast-developing technologies, such as AMRs (autonomous mobile robots), combined with pick-to-light technologies, have transformed goods-to-person order processing, bringing highly flexible and scalable, low-Capex designs within reach of SMEs. However, the choices can be complex, making unbiased technical expertise an invaluable resource. AMRs are highly flexible and scalable forms of warehouse automation which can offer a rapid ROI. And technologies such as zonerouting conveyors, flow-racking and cross-belt sorters, can all be brought together as a cohesive system that adds value. A successful outcome can take many forms. For one leading retailer, significant operational benefits and savings were achieved by creating an omni-channel fulfilment operation that integrates a variety of picking, sorting and storage methods for efficient processing of ecommerce orders, as well as store replenishment. In another application, a prominent third-party logistics company is using modular automation to great effect across multiple clients, scaling up or down as demand dictates. The key to successful integration of best-ofbreed warehouse technologies is the skilled application of suitable software. Ferag’s ferag.doWarehouse software, for example, can connect, control and manage smart warehouse technologies from different suppliers, making it ideal for SMEs keen to take their first-step into warehouse automation. n Where do some businesses go wrong when implementing smart warehouses? Chris More, head of sales for Ferag’s UK and Nordic regions, suggests that they might not have had the freedom to choose the best-of-breed technologies to deliver the flexibility, scalability and fast ROI they expected. This automated warehouse at the Spanish children’s clothing brand, Mayoral, transports, buffers and sorts both hanging garments, as well as folded or boxed items, at a rate of 12,000 items per hour
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MjQ0NzM=