The advantages of warehouse automation are endless—they help minimize costs, provide scalability, increase productivity, and improve efficiency. Still, 80% of warehouses lack any form of automation.
So, for those on the fence about investing in warehouse automation, whether being a G2P (goods-to-person) robot or Sortation System, here are the 7 first-mover advantages to get you going!
7 First-Mover Advantages of Warehouse Automation
1. Gain resilience in the middle of a global supply chain crisis
2. Minimize costs earlier on the road
3. Provide your customers with excellent services
4. Attain the know-how needed to make informed decisions
5. Allow yourself the time to optimize deployment
6. Give your employees time to learn and adapt
7. Acquire the best hires in a tough market
1. Gain resilience in the middle of a global supply chain crisis
One of the most important first-mover advantages of warehouse automation is that it will provide you with the stability most businesses have a hard time achieving today—especially because of the disruption in supply chains.
Warehouse automation provides you with stable self-functioning operations, leaving you more time and resources to overcome challenges such as the pandemic and supply chain uncertainties.
Thus, the earlier you start your automation journey, the earlier you’ll be able to focus on business development and troubleshooting instead of operational tasks.
2. Minimize costs earlier on the road
With early investments in warehouse automation technology, you’ll reap both financial and operational benefits earlier on the road:
Minimized overhead costs
The minute you deploy an automated warehouse system, you get to significantly reduce overhead costs such as labor and even energy expenses.
Optimized operation costs
Warehouse automation solutions, especially automated picking technology like G2Ps, are designed to both save storage space and increase throughput. Thus, you get to utilize more square meters for inventory while you improve your picking productivity by 300%, which allows you to achieve more in less time.
Rapid ROI
This one goes without saying, the earlier you invest in warehouse automation technologies, the earlier you’ll get your ROI (return on investment).
If you’re looking for more benefits of warehouse automation you’ll experience right off the bat, here are the 11 instant benefits of G2P robots.
Being the thinnest G2P robot within its class, TARQAN provides 10% more storage space than its competitors.
3. Provide your customers with excellent services
Among the many advantages of warehouse automation is how it can help you significantly improve customer satisfaction. And since customer satisfaction is a massive key to business continuity in today’s competitive market, it’s just another indicator of why you should deploy such automation now rather than later.
For instance, if you’re an eCommerce brand with in-house fulfillment operations, a G2P can increase order picking accuracy and provide you with faster fulfillment processes. Since 62% of customers want faster deliveries, this will enable you to better serve your customers and ensure customer retention.
Similarly, if you’re a 3PL that serves many clients, your improved total order cycle times will help you close deals faster and will put you ahead of those competitors who haven’t deployed any warehouse automation yet.
In both scenarios, by being an early adapter of warehouse automation, you’ll gain a huge competitive advantage with improved customer experiences and better value propositions.
4. Attain the know-how needed to make informed decisions
Out of the many first-mover advantages of warehouse automation, we think this one could be the most important one. Why?
The minute you decide you want to deploy warehouse automation, there are many factors that you have to weigh in, such as:
- How many SKUs do you have?
- What is your order volume?
- Do you have any inventory with special handling requirements (e.g., fragile products, cold storage)?
- Do you have pre-determined peak periods?
- How can you best utilize your warehouse space?
Thus, the earlier you start, the more time you’ll have to thoroughly evaluate your operations, gather data and information from various robot suppliers, and ultimately make an informed decision that best suits your requirements.
5. Allow yourself the time to optimize deployment
To ensure that you’re utilizing the advantages of warehouse automation to its fullest extent, you need to make sure you optimize it as much as you can.
That being said, if you invest in warehouse automation early on, you’ll have plenty of time to optimize its deployment before it becomes a major part of your operations.
You can test different approaches and figure out what works best for your specific needs before it becomes too deeply ingrained into your operations and integrate other technical elements and software and troubleshoot if needed.
TARQAN’s open API facilitates seamless integrations with numerous software and Warehouse Management Systems.
6. Give your employees time to learn and adapt
By now, everyone knows the advantages of warehouse automation are enormous. However, if you want to make the most of them, you have to take into account the time your employees will need to adapt to them.
Investing early on allows employees ample time to get up-to-speed with automation technologies without having them feel overwhelmed or rushed during onboarding processes.
Doing so not only makes them more comfortable but also ensures that they understand the ins and outs of how systems work before being put into place across larger parts of the operation, resulting in greater efficiency and productivity from day one!
7. Acquire the best hires in a tough market
Finding warehouse employees is already very tough due to the global labor shortage. It gets even more challenging when you’re looking for those equipped with specialized skillsets required for warehouse automation technologies.
Thus, by being an early adopter of warehouse automation, you’ll have a better chance at recruiting top talent and maybe even training current employees to fill in those positions.
All in all…
The first-mover advantages of warehouse automation are hard to ignore—however, we know that it’s not an easy step forward. It requires careful planning, investment, and a good understanding of which warehouse technology is best for you.
If you can’t decide which is best for you and want to have a chat about how you can adapt automation, contact our automation experts today!
