The Material Handling Blog

It’s no secret that, since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, foot traffic in brick-and-mortar stores has seen a dramatic decrease. Recent reports show a slight increase and recovery but it is becoming increasingly clear that online shopping is the way of the future. How are businesses responding to this trend and what does this mean for parcel shipments?

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Post originally published and provided courtesy of Scallog. In order to coordinate and absorb those retail flows as effectively as possible to meet demand, logistics engineers must become more efficient and productive, beyond trading off their resources as an adjustment variable. Automation, and specifically goods-to-person robotics, is a crucial element to ensure efficient logistics without compromising on the operator’s safety and well-being.

The warehousing industry has grown in the last few years by becoming more intentionally planned, multifaceted and accessible. It’s a push towards automation. This will progress further in the upcoming years, especially as companies look to meet customer’s fast fulfilment expectations and challenges like labour and real estate availability continue. The last few decades have shed a light on how products get to consumers, bringing increased attention to warehousing and distribution which has evolved the focus bringing substantial study and investment.

Featuring capacity for goods to person system storage of 3.6 million products, Dafiti Group’s newest warehouse, called LEAP, houses one of the most advanced automation systems in the world providing fast delivery across Latin America. As part of the Global Fashion Group, Dafiti leads fashion and lifestyle ecommerce retail sales in Latin America and needed a facility and supporting technology to match their spirit for innovation and top-level customer satisfaction. This fast-moving system was expertly integrated with Dafiti’s current and future ecommerce growth in mind, offering a reliably convenient shopping experience for years to come. “[LEAP’s] scale and sophistication speak to the transformational growth of the fashion ecommerce industry and will help to propel our next ten years of growth in the region,” says Christoph Barchewitz, Co-CEO of the Global Fashion Group.

Com capacidade de armazenamento de 3,6 milhões de produtos, o mais novo armazém do Grupo Dafiti, chamado LEAP, abriga um dos sistemas de automação mais avançados do mundo, proporcionando entrega rápida em toda a América Latina. Como parte do Global Fashion Group, a Dafiti lidera as vendas de varejo de comércio eletrônico de moda e estilo de vida na América Latina e precisava de instalações e tecnologia de suporte para corresponder ao seu espírito de inovação e satisfação de alto nível do cliente.

Con una capacidad del sistema de almacenamiento de 3,6 millones de “productos a persona”, el nuevo depósito de Dafiti Group, denominado LEAP, aloja uno de los sistemas de automatización más avanzados del mundo y ofrece servicio de entrega rápida en toda Latinoamérica. Como parte del Global Fashion Group, Dafiti lidera las ventas minoristas de moda y comercio electrónico en Latinoamérica y necesitaba unas instalaciones y tecnología de soporte al nivel de su espíritu innovador y de máxima satisfacción al cliente. Ese dinámico sistema se integró con pericia pensando en el crecimiento actual y futuro del comercio electrónico, para ofrecer una experiencia de compra confiable y práctica en los años venideros.

Pick to light has become a staple of warehouse distribution and order picking. Here are the top 5 benefits. What if there was an easier, automated way to locate these items? Say, when you want to find an item a beacon of light illuminates to direct you to the appropriate aisle, and then another beacon of light illuminates to get you to the correct shelf, and eventually the exact location on the shelf.

Designed for agility and growth, PUMA’s new Indianapolis distribution center was immediately put to the test facing unprecedented ecommerce demand in addition to new, unexpected safety measures.

“Quite frankly, we were gonna burst.” Sports company PUMA was not only quickly outgrowing their primary U.S. ecommerce distribution center in California, they were also facing increasing pressures in the rapidly evolving and growing North America ecommerce retail market. And, this was prior to the rapid ecommerce growth triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic. Looking to reach their east coast customers faster and more efficiently, a new automated warehouse was planned and opened in 2020 in Indianapolis, Indiana.

With continuing growth in ecommerce sales and mobile device usage, companies will need to master the art of fulfillment in minutes to meet same-day delivery requests.

By now, we all know the headache that is the world of grocery ecommerce. Between a global pandemic, supply chain issues, product shortages and changing consumer demands, many grocers are scrambling to make the best decision for their customers and their bottom line. The industry transitioning from “how a grocer is going to automate the instore fulfillment process?” to “how are they going to optimize the whole process, including last mile delivery?” Brick Meets Click data showed that online grocery sales for pickup or delivery were $6.6 billion in April of this year. That’s down from the $7.1 billion in grocery e-commerce sales in March of this year, but up from $5.3 billion in April 2020. Reducing the labor spend for filling orders in the store is the first step; what follows is a strategy that can help reduce the overall cost of getting orders into the hands of customers, regardless of the hand-off location. Being a high-volume and low-margin industry, grocers need microfulfillment automation and technologies that are proven, scalable, dense, fast AND have a quick, high return on investment, like these: