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Revolutionizing Warehousing: From Ancient Storage to AI-Driven Efficiency and Innovation

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Global Trade Daily, logistics, Technology, Warehousing

Revolutionizing Warehousing: From Ancient Storage to AI-Driven Efficiency and Innovation

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Introduction

The warehousing industry has undergone a remarkable transformation over the years, evolving to meet the ever-changing demands of global trade. In this article, we will explore the history of warehousing, types of warehouses, the types of products being stored today, and fundamental advances such as refrigeration, container shipping, and the rise of e-commerce. We’ll also delve into the modern era of warehousing, the role of computers and specialized software, the impact of artificial intelligence (AI), and future trends in warehouse automation.

A brief history of storage

Warehousing has a rich history dating back to ancient civilizations, when goods were stored in rudimentary facilities. The Industrial Revolution marked a turning point, with the introduction of more organized and specialized storage facilities. The arrival of the railroad and interstate highway system further revolutionized the industry by improving transportation and connectivity.

Types of Warehouses

Warehouses come in various forms, including:

  • Public Warehouses: Facilities that provide storage space to multiple clients on a rental basis.
  • Private Warehouses: Owned and operated by a single entity, generally for its own storage needs.
  • Distribution Centers: Focused on the efficient distribution of products and order fulfillment.
  • Cold Storage Warehouses: Specialized facilities for the storage of perishable and pharmaceutical products.

Types of goods that are stored today

Modern warehouses house a wide range of products, including:

  1. Consumer Goods: Electronics, clothing and household products.
  2. Perishables: Food, pharmaceutical products and medical supplies.
  3. Automotive Parts: Engines, tires and other components.
  4. E-Commerce Inventory: Products sold by online retailers.
  5. Industrial Equipment: Machinery, tools and raw materials.

Innovative points in storage

  1. Invention of Refrigeration: Refrigeration technology allowed the storage of perishable products and the expansion of the food industry.
  2. Oil and gas pipeline transportation: Efficient pipelines and storage facilities transformed the energy industry.
  3. Invention of container shipping: Standardized shipping containers revolutionized global trade by simplifying cargo handling and reducing costs.
  4. Rise of e-commerce: The exponential growth of online retail required adjustments in warehousing to accommodate order fulfillment, returns, and fast shipping.

The modern era of storage

Today, the storage industry relies heavily on technology and innovation. Computers and specialized software are essential to optimize storage and distribution processes. The four main types of software used in the storage industry include:

  1. Warehouse Management Systems (WMS) – Streamlines inventory management, order processing, and pick-and-pack operations.
  2. Transportation Management Systems (TMS): Facilitate efficient transportation planning and route optimization.
  3. Inventory Management Software – Track stock levels, replenish inventory, and reduce carrying costs.
  4. Supply Chain Management (SCM) Software: Improve overall supply chain efficiency and coordination.

Featured Storage Software Examples

  1. SAP Extended Warehouse Management (EWM): offers comprehensive warehouse and distribution management.
  2. Oracle Warehouse Management (WMS): Optimizes inventory and labor productivity.
  3. Blue Yonder (formerly JDA Software) – Provides end-to-end retail and supply chain solutions.
  4. Manhattan Associates: Specializes in warehouse and transportation management.
  5. HighJump (now part of Korber) – Offers a suite of supply chain management solutions.

Use of AI in the storage industry

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is making significant advances in warehouse industry, with usage terms including:

  1. Predictive analytics: AI analyzes historical data to forecast demand, allowing for better inventory management.
  2. Warehouse automation: AI-powered robots and autonomous vehicles improve efficiency and reduce labor costs.
  3. Staff training: AI-powered simulations and virtual reality help train workers more effectively.
  4. Shipment Tracking: AI enables real-time tracking and monitoring of goods during transportation.

Benefiting from AI service companies

AI company can help warehouses implement AI solutions. We offer expertise in AI technologies, development of custom AI models and integration into existing systems, leading to optimized operations, cost savings and increased accuracy.

Predictable future trends in automation

The future of storage will see greater automation and efficiency, with trends such as:

  1. Robotics: More robots and Automatically Guided Vehicles (AGVs) will help in picking, packing and transportation.
  2. IoT Integration: Internet of Things will provide real-time data to improve inventory and asset tracking.
  3. AI-driven decision making: AI will play a critical role in optimizing warehouse operations, from demand forecasting to
  4. Sustainability: The warehouses will focus on energy efficiency and sustainable practices to reduce their environmental footprint.

Conclusion

The warehousing industry has evolved significantly, adapting to the changing landscape of global commerce and e-commerce. Today, technology and software solutions, combined with the power of AI, are ushering in an era of efficiency, precision and innovation. As warehouses continue to automate and optimize their operations, they are prepared to meet the challenges and opportunities of the future, revolutionizing the logistics and supply chain landscape.

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Global Logistics, Global Trade Daily, Technology, Warehousing

Synergy Logistics Triumphs with SnapControl: Industry 4.0 Breakthrough Wins Robotics & Automation Award 2023

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In the inaugural Robotics & Automation Awards 2023, Synergy Logistics clinched the prestigious Industry 4.0 category for its revolutionary multi-agent orchestration software, SnapControl. This platform seamlessly coordinates all automation devices and robotic systems in warehouses, offering not just operational efficiency but a comprehensive data overview. This real-time data facilitates tangible labor savings and informed asset management decisions.

Outshining competitors, including Coca Cola HBC, SnapControl earned the spotlight for its ability to swiftly integrate automation into warehouses without prolonged software disruptions—achieving in weeks what traditionally took years. The Robotics & Automation Award spokesperson highlighted the groundbreaking nature of Synergy’s entry, stating, “We voted for Synergy because SnapControl enables rapid automation adoption without major software upheavals.”

Collaborating with a rapidly expanding U.S. online retailer, Synergy demonstrated SnapControl’s transformative capabilities in a new 300,000 sq.ft warehouse equipped with automated mobile robots (AMRs), carton right-sizing equipment, and automated packaging systems. SnapControl accurately assessed manual versus automated pick tasks, leading to a sixfold increase in productivity and a remarkable return on investment (ROI) of over half a million dollars. The company now realizes weekly savings of over $40,000, with an impressive investment payback period of just 23 weeks.

Tony Dobson, Synergy Logistics CEO, expressed delight at SnapControl’s recognition, emphasizing its role as a pivotal tool in warehouse automation. He noted that SnapControl’s unique interpretation of bi-directional communication between machines and advanced Warehouse Management Systems (WMS) facilitates efficient and accurate decision-making—a crucial element in the second wave of automation endorsed by industry analysts.

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Global Logistics, Global Trade Daily, Technology, Warehousing

Efficient Warehouses Fit Sustainable Operations

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Sustainability has become an important issue for warehouse management in the US. Reducing the environmental impact of operations is a big challenge that can be overcome by improving process efficiency. In many cases, this is achieved by implementing warehouse automation. Efficient, automated processes need less energy, emit fewer greenhouse gases, and can do more within compact facilities. However, by choosing an automation partner that also champions sustainability, warehouse operators can truly maximize these benefits.

Hans Jongebloed, Senior Postal and Parcel Expert at Prime Vision, a global leader in computer vision integration and robotics for logistics and e-commerce, looks at sustainability challenges facing US warehouses and how the company reduces environmental impact.

Sustainability considerations for warehouses

A good place to start the journey to a sustainable warehouse is the facility itself. Solar panels, modern insulation, and a renewable energy supplier can greatly reduce the carbon footprint of operations. Placement is another factor to consider. A giant warehouse in an area of great natural value is undesirable aesthetically and ecologically, but logistics also play a part. Locating a compact warehouse in an optimal area for local deliveries, with good road connections, away from nature hotspots, minimizes environmental damage and traffic pollution.

Sustainability also applies to people. Thankfully, the days of warehouse workers walking miles carrying heavy loads week after week are almost behind us. With robots and other material handling solutions, personnel are no longer subjected to this level of manual labor, ensuring a happier, healthier workforce that is more willing to stay on.

While these sustainability goals can be reached, a particular industry challenge illustrates how warehouses can further improve the efficiency of operational processes and reduce environmental impact.

The point of no return

We’ve all indulged in clothes shopping at some point, and many of us choose to do it online. However, while an outfit can be easily tried on at the store, e-commerce customers do that at home, presenting warehouses with a big sustainability problem: returns. Millions of them.

One US logistics company stated that the CO2 cost of returning e-commerce purchases was similar to the output of 3 million cars.[1] While e-commerce returns have dropped slightly compared to 2020 and 2021, they still amounted to $ 203.22 billion in 2022 (18% of total online purchases). The decline is expected to continue, hitting 14.7% in 2026.[2] Despite this trend, returns will continue to be a challenge for e-commerce businesses in the US.

Returns are a big sustainability issue for e-commerce, as they constitute a high volume of products swimming against the stream of the normal shipping process. First, the item needs to travel back to a distribution center (often different from where it came from), generating transport emissions. Then, it is a long, cumbersome manual procedure to identify the product, check its condition, and sort it properly. This often requires large numbers of personnel, generating extra CO2 from commuting. If an item can’t be recycled or resold, it ends up as landfill, producing unnecessary waste. Needless to say that in the era of unlimited free returns, all these processes can also create extra costs for sellers.

This is clearly an area for improvement. However, enhancing the efficiency of the process flow offers a solution not just for returns, but any warehouse operation.

Automation equals efficiency

Naturally, automation is one of the main answers to this efficiency challenge, and thankfully, increasing efficiency always has a positive impact on sustainability.

Using the returns example, being able to quickly check products with computer vision systems, transport goods to appropriate areas for resale or recycling with robots, plus spot trends and areas where processes can be improved with analytics software can greatly expedite operations. Furthermore, it requires fewer personnel to function. By harnessing renewable energy to power automated equipment, warehouse operators can also mitigate the impact of the electricity demand, delivering these efficiency benefits sustainably.

Automating warehouse processes in this manner allows fulfillment and returns to be conducted on a reduced timeframe, within a more compact site, all while minimizing emissions, energy consumption and, effectively, lowering the operating costs. This means that sustainability goals can be met at every level of operations. However, choosing the right solutions can also bring additional benefits.

Sustainable approach to automation

At its facility in Richmond, Virginia, Prime Vision is working not just to provide products that enable the efficient, sustainable running of warehouse operations but is also reducing the carbon cost of the solutions themselves.

Robots are a critical component of a modern automated warehouse but are complex pieces of equipment that are intensive to produce. Consequently, Prime Vision focuses on reducing the impact of maintaining robots. A repair-rather-than-replace approach helps improve sustainability, but when a robot is beyond repair, Prime Vision rescues as many parts as possible to be used as spare components. Good-quality parts are fitted to other robots or used for in-house research – effectively recycling the components. Inspections identify and separate sub-par components, so there is no risk of fitting the robots with inferior parts. Localized repair facilities further ensure that spares and maintenance personnel can reach customers without generating the excessive carbon emissions associated with long-distance travel.

Software is another area of focus. Maintenance can be carried out remotely, so nobody needs to drive to site to carry out updates. Prime Vision also continually optimizes its software to run more efficiently, which reduces the number of servers required. Expanding on hardware and helping customers to collate facility computing power in an optimal, well-monitored space can save additional energy during installation and operation. Prime Vision applies new IT developments too, like hyper-converged infrastructure. Such cloud-style solutions with high scalability

and efficiency can eliminate the need for large quantities of servers on-site, allowing customers to downsize infrastructure while adding the required flexibility.

Choosing the right partner

Ultimately, to save the planet, the whole supply chain must work together to achieve the most sustainable logistics operations. This includes cooperation between warehouses and the companies that supply automation solutions to them. While the increased process efficiency enabled by robots, computer vision, and analytics software can greatly reduce the carbon footprint of warehouse operations – there is the provider to consider too.

Prime Vision is dedicated to reducing the environmental impact of its products and operations. A dedicated sustainability team continually assesses carbon footprint, identifying focus areas and actively lowering the company’s emissions. Along with its solutions and local presence, this ensures that while Prime Vision contributes to improving the sustainability of US warehouse operations, like its customers, it is also working on reducing the impact of the overall supply chain.

Agile Supply Chain
Archives, Global Trade Daily, Warehousing

Insource or Outsource? That’s the Question Facing Companies When it Comes to Warehousing.

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To insource or outsource your warehouse: That is the question.

Companies face many considerations when it comes to deciding whether to own or lease a warehouse filled with their own employees or hire a third party with warehousing expertise and their own workers.

Exploration of the latter has often caused the phone to ring—or the computer inbox to fill—for Todd Alloway, vice president, Contract Logistics at ODW Logistics. Since 1971—and including the 16 years Alloway has been with the company—the Columbus, Ohio, concern has been providing warehousing, distribution and transportation solutions for hundreds of brands.

Of course, ODW will take all the new business it can get, but Alloway concedes in a phone interview that outsourcing usually makes the least sense to a company that has “a team of logistics people inside the business.”

“They might have a vice president of supply chain who has 10 people under that person and a lot of other staff that are part of the business,” he says. “They may understand more about what they are doing” than a third party could coming in cold.

Alloway says he and his team must understand that before making a pitch to outsource to such a company, admitting it can get delicate if you are talking with someone who may lose his or her job or has buddies in positions that could disappear with outsourcing. “We have to walk that fine line,” he says.

It also might make sense to keep things in house if a company’s services or products are complex or highly specialized, something that can come up with those who are big in the manufacturing world, according to Alloway.

Typically, before partnering with a potential client, Alloway will meet with their leadership “face to face to ensure they are a good fit.” During that initial interview, he will gather information about the business. “I can’t go on and say why ODW will be better until I truly understand your business,” he says. “Upfront research is the first thing we have to do.”

“I tell folks that all the time that you can’t just hand me a price sheet and have me give you a price. There is no blanket pricing or one size fits all for businesses. We find out a lot of times that they don’t even know what they need. We have to find out what is valuable on both ends, we’ve got to find out what’s important.”

In today’s ever-changing modern warehousing, outsourcing may be what’s important. It allows a company to leverage someone else’s expertise in transportation, warehousing, distribution, setting up supply chains and maintaining compliance standards, so the original client can focus again on its core competency.

“A lot of our customers started out doing it themselves,” Alloway notes, but as those companies grew, so did their capital investments in staffing, equipping and maintaining warehouses. Suddenly confronted with the need to consolidate operations and/or become technologically viable, many such companies turn to third-party experts like ODW Logistics.

Another challenge with keeping a modern warehouse in-house is staffing, according to Alloway, who cites as an example his company’s Columbus base, where the unemployment rate currently hovers around 3 percent. Companies with warehouses, he says, must develop strategies when it comes to seeking, training and retaining skilled workers among an ever more competitive labor pool. Faced with the time, effort and cost of staying in the hiring game, many conclude it would be better to farm all that out so they can, again, concentrate on their company’s service or product.

When it comes to logistics, companies that ship to big box retailers also have to know the differing compliance, ordering and fulfillment processes of, say, Walmart, Target and Kohl’s. Concerns like ODW Logistics already thrive in that atmosphere because of experience already gleaned on behalf of existing customers, Alloway points out.

As a for instance, ODW’s Director of Marketing John Meier mentions a health and beauty customer that knew going in that the logistics company already worked with others in the same industry.

“One key differentiator” when it came to snagging that account “was our expertise with Ulta, Sephora, different salons and big box retailers,” Alloway recalls. “Word of mouth is still very big in the industry.”

Wanting to know whether ODW has experience in a potential customer’s industry is often the first question Alloway gets. Another, obviously, is price, “especially from someone new to the market that has done it themselves the entire time,” he says. “They want the new technology and whatever the latest and greatest inventory management system is, but they don’t understand the cost that gets that. A lot of time it is education on our part” that is imparted to the potential client.

Likewise, a company like Alloway’s can figure out the overall savings that will ultimately come from outsourcing, but the one thing he and his colleagues will not do is quote a price until they have completed research of the potential client and its industry.

Today’s “I want it now” shipping culture has challenged companies like ODW Logistics, concedes Alloway, who adds that he approaches a delivery schedule less on speed than on the best optimization of his trucks. “Next day and two day are still important,” he says, “but in a direct consumer market it’s more important how you handle returns.”

After pausing to think more about today’s expected speedy deliveries, he adds, “We have had to put in a valiant effort that last few years.”

However, Alloway also offers that with a new client, landing the account does not always come down to speed, price or even experience. He brings up Handgards, a provider of high quality food safety, food protection, protective wear and food service products. The El Paso, Texas-based company managed its distribution network for half a century before partnering with ODW Logistics a decade ago.

“One of the most important attributes they sought was a cultural fit,” says Alloway. “They are a family-oriented business and when we first went to visit them we quickly understood that, and we were able to help them see how ODW has the business values that would match theirs.”

You read that right: Choosing whether to stay in house or go with a third party can come down to whether you get your new partner and are convinced your new partner gets you. What was most important to Handgards was someone, as Alloway put it, “with a similar feel.” ODW now handles the food safety company’s logistics and warehouse support in a 300,000-square-foot facility.

“The people that I have worked with in the ODW organization have been excellent partners to our business and work diligently on our behalf,” said an executive with Handgards.

“Like with most companies outsourcing for the first time, there can be a fear of change, a fear of how a new one is going to handle a product,” Alloway says. “‘Will they do it like we do? Will they talk with customers like we do?’ We went and visited them, made some research and it did not come down to price. It came down to did they like us and did they think we would be a good business fit together.

“… Sometimes we are not the best fit, somebody else is or they should keep doing it themselves. You just do not know that until you do the research.”