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How Robots Can Help Meet Supply Chain Demands Amid A Persistent Labor Shortage

Boom Or Bust: How Robots Can Help Meet Supply Chain Demands Amid A Persistent Labor Shortage

With a recession looming and the fear that consumers may slow spending, supply-chain leaders may wonder if they should pull back on their investments in automation. That’s not a good idea.To get more news about Robots on Demand, you can visit glprobotics.com official website.

Until 2020, online purchasing was growing rapidly. Then came the pandemic, and it exploded. Today, orders are overwhelming distribution facilities, labor is near impossible to find or keep and customers expect next-day delivery.

All these factors are driving the need for expanded, faster fulfillment. All these factors are driving the need for expanded, faster fulfillment. Global warehouse capacity is expected to increase from 28 billion square feet in 2020 to nearly 38 billion in 2025, according to data research firm Interact Analysis. The firm also found that investment in warehouse automation is expected to balloon from $29 billion (2020) to $67 billion in 2025.Warehouses and fulfillment centers have long been hubs of automation, teeming with mobile robots to transport goods, movable walls to store products and miles of conveyors to sort and send items downstream toward delivery.

Recently, robots have gotten a lot smarter. This is something managers from the warehouse floor to the C-suite need to understand because robots can address the rapid changes, disruptions and other challenges the supply chain is experiencing—regardless of whether the economy goes boom or bust.Access to cheap cloud computing and storage has changed the cost equation for robotics, accelerating advances in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning that enable robots to take on complex new tasks while continuously learning and improving. These new robots are not just programmed to shuttle bins up and down walkways or conveyors; they make decisions. They leverage superior vision and perception software, along with cheaper, sophisticated cameras and sensors that allow a robot to see, perceive, grasp, pick up and place an object.

An intelligent robot can identify and pick items from a jumbled pile of different products. Each object may have a different shape, weight and dimension. It may be smooth or crinkled, plastic or metallic, round, square or pouch-like. The robot can determine how to pick it up. It can then scan it and, when integrated with other technologies in the warehouse, label it, bag it, sort it or send it downstream on a conveyor. Robots can also now depalletize and decant—that is, unpack boxes on giant pallets.
These are among the capabilities that allow certain robots to take on roles that, until now, have been managed only by humans. In the automation industry, this is called the goods-to-robot (GTR) segment of warehouse automation, and it’s a crucial area where the greatest advances in efficiency can be achieved.

Another contemporary headline: Fulfillment operators are experiencing a critical labor shortage. The June unemployment rate was 3.6%, one of the lowest rates ever seen. On top of that, warehouse picking and sorting jobs are boring, dirty and dangerous, so it’s hardly surprising that workers are not lining up for these jobs.

Fifty-four percent of logistics operators said hiring and retaining qualified workers was a top challenge, second only to product shortages, according to a 2022 Material Handling Industry (MHI) association survey. And a recent internal report leaked from Amazon warned that the company could run out of people to hire for its vast warehouse operations by 2024.

Can robots backfill these positions? Yes. Smart robots can match most human capabilities in a busy warehouse—and work multiple back-to-back shifts. While some industry observers raise the specter of robots “taking” manual jobs, my view is that these robots will, in fact, create better jobs for warehouse workers. As robots proliferate, they will require better-trained, better-paid humans to maintain them, clear occasional jams, monitor performance and set schedules.


by freeamfva | 2022-12-19 12:05 | Comments(0)

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