The learning warehouse – the next quantum leap thanks to artificial intelligence

Are you looking for intelligent solutions to optimize your warehouse performance? Swisslog data scientists and robotics and IT experts are using artificial intelligence (AI) to help intralogistics systems learn and evolve on their own. Our vision: the learning warehouse.

Your customers’ ordering behavior, your machine utilization, or your use of resources: All along your supply chain there is information that – if linked intelligently – has the potential to make processes more efficient.

The goal of the learning warehouse concept is to equip our warehouse IT systems with self-learning mechanisms by applying the methods of artificial intelligence. You benefit from new opportunities for process optimization that didn’t exist before.

The learning warehouse automates decision-making

Rigid programming is so yesterday. Today the focus is on linking IT systems with machine learning algorithms.

Thanks to complex computing operations, our warehouse systems learn to recognize patterns, regularities, and interdependencies from unstructured data and adapt, dynamically and independently, to new situations within the entire logistics system.
Machine learning is the key to greater efficiency in your warehouse. Gather experience, anticipate situations, and expand existing know-how without outside help – that’s how machines are able to make the right decision for every situation within the supply chain in just seconds.

One concept, many avenues for optimization

Imagine launching the picking process when the customer hasn’t even started to check out yet.

The applications of artificial intelligence are infinite. One of our goals is to help you create near-perfect forecasts about the ordering behavior of your customers through the use of intelligent algorithms. This will allow you to take external factors such as marketing campaigns or the current weather conditions into account to predict the ordering probability of every customer with virtually 100 percent accuracy.

The learning warehouse brings maximum intelligence and efficiency to the entire picking process. Software agents make it possible to detect similar order requests in the system and process them in tandem. That saves not only time and distance but also helps you prevent order bottlenecks at the picking stations.

Artificial intelligence makes the warehouse of the future more dynamic, more agile, and more responsive. The intelligent networking of machine, process and product information is a quantum leap for process optimization.

Tim Eick, Head SynQ Competence Center, Swisslog Logistics Automation

Self-learning systems contribute to cost efficiency. Intelligent linking of product and display information with your employees’ experiences ensures that you won’t ship overly large packaging units. In the future, your system will be able to make optimal packaging decisions on its own.

Robots can learn from people

Improving human-machine interactions is another area for potential optimization. Just imagine equipping your picking personnel with smart glasses! By feeding hand movements back to IT, you’ll also be expanding the solution expertise of your picking robots. Although it remains difficult to convey every intricate interaction between the human senses and motor action to machines, one day nearly everything humans experience will be transferable to machines as new knowledge for completing a variety of tasks.

What is your vision of the learning warehouse?

Research into artificial intelligence is broad-based. What does it mean for your logistics? How can Swisslog support you on your path to AI? Please contact us to find out more.

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