Development trend of fulfillment technology in distribution center

The shift to advanced automation for distribution and fulfillment operations in distribution centers is accelerating, forcing traditional labor-intensive processes and material handling strategies to give way to more automated solutions. Faced with the huge challenges of new retail and e-commerce, we have seen major retail giants begin to layout automation upgrades in distribution centers.

At the forefront of this transformation, retailers are eager to circumvent the "rocks" of profitability and business continuity by:

Reduce dependence on labor

Increase cargo turnover to meet service level agreements

Flexible to meet the requirements of the peak season

Meet annual business growth expectations

The new automation investment will focus on gaining strategic advantage in the supply chain in the critical sorting, inventory storage and retrieval processes, where the pain point is that no amount of labor efficiency can match the complexity and category proliferation of today's e-commerce fulfillment. As throughput levels rise, delivery Windows shrink, and labor mobility increases, retailers will be further Mired in lackluster productivity and profit growth.

At the same time, emerging advanced automation solutions and their integrated software continue to evolve, providing operators with an objective return on investment.

Targeted breakthroughs in key functional areas

In large distribution centers with high throughput, large order volumes, and higher transportation and receiving requirements, high-speed sorting equipment still plays an indispensable role. While traditional sorting and conveying equipment will continue to play their role for the foreseeable future, integrated automation systems offer new opportunities to upgrade many core distribution center operations, such as sorting, inventory storage, and billing.

1. Automatic Access System (AS/RS)

Deploying AS/RS systems in existing distribution centers maximizes throughput and improves reception, order consolidation, and shipping efficiency. These flexible solutions help to compress operating space, increase storage density, and flexibly adapt to various configurations.

The high-speed AS/RS shuttle system is ideally suited to replace large-scale manual picking operations. The modular design of its shelves and storage frames is conducive to increasing the number of shelf layers and the number of channels to meet future storage demand growth. Shuttle systems, typically in cargo to Person (GTP) and cargo to Robot (GTR) configurations, can reduce picking travel times and reduce labor resources, thereby increasing productivity.

Even if pallets are needed for high volume deliveries, the AS/RS loading system can be used to lift pallets from shelves in each aisle and stack them for loading.

2. Robot integration

Integrating robotics could also help distribution center managers ease the growing pressure on e-commerce operations. The robotics strategy focuses on replacing cumbersome, unsafe and repetitive human tasks and dedicating more labor resources to more detailed, high-value tasks. For the most part, retailers tend to use robots to increase productivity and break down human constraints.

While the vision of fully automated robotic fulfillment won't happen overnight, recent robotics advances are being used to transform a wide range of critical workflows, processes, and applications:

Truck handling

Sorting import

Single pick

Palletizing and unpalletizing

Packing and unpacking

Material transport (pallets, goods and cartons)

Robotics solutions are flexible and can improve distribution center operations in a number of ways:

Enable or deactivate on demand, as a supplement when human resources are insufficient, to meet the demand in peak season.

Quickly reprogram to new routes and tasks.

Orchestrate it into a variety of automated workflows with modern warehouse execution systems such as Honeywell's Momentum™ WES.

In addition, modern robotic solutions use universal control platforms, such as the Honeywell Universal Robot Controller (HURC), which enable robot docking and machine learning to continuously adapt to changing distribution center conditions.

Intelligent software strategy

To meet the growing demand, distribution and fulfillment operations are becoming more automated and complex, making advanced warehouse automation software integration even more important. In the past, warehouse software primarily served very specific functions, but this ended up adding complexity to distribution center operations. These problems are often rooted in the existence of multiple software vendors for various automation systems and robotics platforms, leading to silos of automation and a succession of phase-out and upgrade challenges.

Often, this traditional multi-vendor philosophy leads to a near-incomprehensible orchestration of the entire fulfillment system in the distribution center. Today, retailers and distribution center operators need to rethink their software strategies, deploy smart warehouse automation software platforms, and reduce complexity by:

Unify various isolated automation systems

Orchestrate all automation systems executed throughout the warehouse