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Four efficiencies of flexible automation

Article by Megan Gee
clock in bin - time wasted

Slam the brakes on waste with a flexible automation solution.

Waste is the antithesis of efficiency.

To survive and grow, every business needs to make the most of every moment of every staff member’s working day, and every last square centimetre of its commercial property. This is what a flexible warehouse automation system enables you to do. Discover four monumental wastes your business can leave behind after embracing robotics revolution.

Stop wasting time

Warehouse operatives may be hard-working, diligent, and effective, but they are only as efficient as your operations allow. Studies show that between 50%-70% of a manual picker’s time is spent on a task that is at once necessary, but also wasteful.

Walking between the storage bins.

No other sector of no other business would ever allow so much time, effort, and money to go to waste.

A flexible automation alternative lets you recoup these losses and reclaim that time. By having robots bring the goods to the pickers, overall operations become dramatically more efficient. Far more of the picker’s time is spent on what matters; making sure the right product reaches the right place.

End wasteful errors

Warehouse industry experts predict that between 0.3% to 3% of all warehouse orders have some kind of error attached to them. This means 0.3% to 3% of orders result in some kind of unnecessary waste. Waste that with the right systems in place, can be entirely avoided.

The goods-to-person flexible automation solution dramatically reduces manual mistakes. It is less error-prone than paper picking, voice picking, and even bar-code scanning picking. Without long, distracting, and fatigue-inducing walks between bins, warehouse operatives can concentrate in far more depth on their work. Combined with the precision of pick light processes, and the minimal manual errors of one-touch-fulfilment, you have a recipe that could end wasteful errors entirely.

Cease wasting space

Warehouses have walkway aisles between rows upon rows of shelving because that’s where the staff need to go to find and move the product. But when you remove the need for walking, you also remove the need for so many space-consuming walkways.

Using a flexible automation system can result in your warehouse stocking items up to 30% more densely, thanks to the removal of the need for operative walkways. All that space can now be put to much better use, supporting the warehouse’s primary purpose; storing goods to sell to customers.

Forget wasting talent

Staff are your most valuable resource due to their versatility. A member of staff can perform any number of different roles with the right training, experience, and talent. Focusing so much of your team on a single task like picking is a massive missed opportunity.

Flexible automation allows you to redirect and redeploy staff to make the most of their abilities. There are so many different roles pickers could work on in addition to their existing roles. Some of these are:

Make the most of the talent at your disposal. Now that you have re-secured 50% to 70% of their time back, find out just how far your workforce could carry your business.

Witness the power of this efficiency in person by booking a tour. Visit Europe’s first and premier flexible automation demonstration centre, in the city of Lincoln, UK. Find out for yourself why people are calling these kinds of developments ‘the robotics revolution’.

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