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Some of the measures businesses have taken to reduce the impact on their logistics processes are; widening delivery windows, turning traditional stores into dark stores, directing inventory to busy locations, bypassing distribution centres, staggering shifts for safety, stopping operations for cleaning, lowering online order size, relaxing return windows, and capping purchases of high demand products.
Needs have changed, consumer priorities have changed, the way we shop has changed – now stores and their supporting supply chains must change as well.
At Swisslog, we have been speaking with many of our customers about their challenges throughout the COVID-19 period. Traditional infrastructures in many cases were not sufficient to cope with a new level of service and it has been demonstrated that warehouses are experiencing a weak performance for e-commerce and omnichannel.
To support businesses with this challenge, we came up with the idea to develop a soft offer logistics model concept. It would be easily and quickly deployed within a running supply chain to improve the logistics capacity in terms of stock, performance, and by consequence, even the level of service to customers. Investment in automation could also be a way for a company to prepare for the future. For example, to fulfil the need to increase the share of the online business as a plastic deformation.
To implement a solution in the fastest way, we believe that standardization will be the key for success. Automation used to be seen as a bit of a monster to be deployed after long and exhausting investigations of numbers, figures and layouts.
But imagine for a moment that if you could have a black box provided to you in a matter of a few months after the decision is taken. With a performance capability of 1,000 order lines per hour, allowing you to run an additional 20-24,000 order lines per day – would you consider this to be an opportunity for the future and to cope with the new business challenges? This is the question we ask our customers.
We decided to run an investigation with our long-standing customers focusing specifically on e-commerce, grocery, e-grocery, spare parts distribution, electronics, medical, and pharma online distribution. We consolidated a wide range of feedback, which profiles the idea of a logistics module and how automation should be deployed.
Therefore, we have chosen two technologies from our existing portfolio – CarryPick and AutoStore – to deliver these results. CarryPick and AutoStore can guarantee what we have described so far. They can both provide a maximum payback period of a maximum of 2-4 years, a very short time to market, and they can both be very installation friendly.
As consumer behaviours are permanently affected by the pandemic, so are logistics processes. Many businesses are suffering due to the lack of logistics infrastructure to cope with challenges presented by the COVID-19 pandemic. These challenges range from booming online orders, a decline in offline shoppers, and a reduced workforce in the warehouse.
There are three standard layouts for each of these technologies that can be easily deployed within your supply chain. For each of the systems there is a small, medium, and large configuration.
The small layout can perform 400 order lines per hour, the medium layout will allow 1,000 order lines per hour and the large configuration will have the capability to achieve 2,000 order lines per hour. By playing with the number of robots, ports, racks and bins, we can play with the standard configurations in a way that we can finetune them to specific needs.
Swisslog’s SynQ software will control both technologies as well, and this will give our customers the possibility to deploy both systems in the same warehouse, controlled by the same platform. This plays a huge part in optimizing the overall supply chain and the processing of data, giving logistics processes a unique competitive advantage.
Our productive facilities run all aspects of the business, from sales to realization to customer service. This is a fundamental aspect for you to be in the hands of a solid partner. It also means we can guarantee you certain delivery times without worrying about travel bans, as we don’t fly people or materials out China or Asia.
You are invited to contact us if you are interested in the proposed technologies and our vision about how to deploy them. We would be more than happy to provide you with KPIs and pricing details in very short notice. Click here to request access to the six preconfigured layouts and the cost related to each of these options.
If you missed the webinar and would like to catch up, you can still watch a recorded version here:
Over recent months, the world has been facing an unprecedented crisis that is having a huge impact on everyone’s lives. While other sectors experience a drop in sales, food and home essentials have experienced impressive growth rates. According to a study by McKinsey, grocery and at-home entertainment are the categories where people expect to spend more than usual during the COVID-19 outbreak. This is evident in the boost in FMCG sales across European countries.
Many businesses are wondering if this will be an elastic (short-term) or plastic (permanent) effect of the pandemic. While some changes will likely revert to how they were before the pandemic, such as cosmetics and fashion sales, the new roles of e-commerce and traditional stores are likely to be more permanent, according to research by Nielsen. Those that move quickly to support this shift will gain an important competitive advantage.
