Why is automation not meeting your business case?

The world of warehouse, fulfillment, and distribution operations has changed dramatically in the last 20 years. The rise of the internet has created a continual increase in demand for online order fulfillment that has outpaced the means for companies to be able to keep up with the expectation of their consumers. As a result, companies have had to invest significant capital in automation to ensure their operations could meet these new demands while keeping their operational costs low to remain competitive. This transition has spurred the growth of innovative technology to automate many, if not all, of the manual tasks within warehouse operations. Companies are purchasing automation at an ever-increasing rate with the expectation that automation will save them both time and money. However, in a rush to implement automation important aspects are often not evaluated appropriately to ensure the costly automation that is being implemented will meet expectations. 

Are your automated systems integrated?

To maximize automation all operational processes and systems must be integrated. For example, if a site is implementing a conveyor pick module, then the waving of orders, picker speeds, and replenishment must all be integrated. If these systems are not integrated then the conveyor system may incur too much congestion that prevents orders from being picked, packed, and shipped on time. Automated Guided Vehicles (AGV’s) and Automated Storage and Retrieval Systems (ASRS) have similar requirements. Often companies purchase and implement these systems to increase their picking and replenishment speeds while reducing labor. While these are fantastic capabilities they must be implemented with the proper fusion and integration of interrelated systems. There must be one system that integrates picker speeds, navigation of the AGV’s or ASRS, controls the slotting of inventory in these systems, is integrated with the downstream conveyor systems, and automates replenishment tasks. All these items must be incorporated while the system also manages the release of order to ensure priorities, cut times, and special handling is adopted. The success or failure of an automated system is a result of the perfect fusion between software, hardware, and operations.

Clarity is Top Hat Engineering's Warehouse Optimization and Fusion System. It integrates software, hardware, and operations in a simple yet sophisticated solution.

Is the automated system intelligent enough?

As mentioned, automated systems are very often sold as hardware and then another company implements their software package to communicate to the automated system for activity control. Regardless of the automated solution that is purchased, the solution’s success or failure, is a direct result of the software that is communicating to it. The idea that automated solutions will bring immediate savings to a business is inaccurate. Automated systems must be incorporated with very intelligent software solutions that can identify the optimal path for the automated equipment to ensure the solutions are maximized. For example, if an AGV has two orders that it needs to complete, would you want the AGV to travel to the furthest most location to fulfill the order that has a lower priority, or would you want it to grab the order that has a higher priority and is closer to the pick station? The answer is obvious, you want it to grab the item that can fulfill the priority order first that is closer to the pick station. In a lot of automated systems these factors are not evaluated. The automated systems choose which orders to retrieve based on when the order was received from the Warehouse Management System (WMS). Therefore, the automated system travels unnecessary distances to fulfill lower priority orders. The system must be intelligent enough to balance priorities, slotting locations, travel distance, and operator workstation speeds to ensure the optimal performance is achieved. 

Is the automated system reliable?

Automated systems are complex. It is very difficult to develop a system that has the capacity, speed, and advanced capabilities required to meet the expectations required without having a significant number of parts and communication systems to make it work. However, it doesn’t mean that reliability must be sacrificed to achieve implementing a complex automated system. To achieve reliability an evaluation of a system’s parts, suppliers, and onboard technology systems must be performed. This evaluation must be performed by a neutral party, because often emotions interfere with evaluating technology, which then translates to oversight of key factors that can cause detrimental impacts to a warehouse operation and supply chain team. 

At Top Hat Engineering, we have seen certain manufacturers of automated equipment take short cuts because of supply chain shortages. This means quality parts are replaced with less reliable parts to meet demands. What difference can be made in the uptime of your system if the proper parts and equipment were evaluated prior to purchasing the equipment? Additionally, reliable forms of communication between the integrated systems are extremely important. The design, architecture, development, and implementation of the communication system must be performed by experts in automated systems with a focus on reliability. There must be primary and secondary forms of communication with built-in alerts, or alarms, to indicate a failure in communication to mitigate the impact of communication issues. Redundancy is critical to automated system design and implementation, and without redundancy it should be assumed that eventually a warehouse operation will come to a complete stop because of a critical failure. 

The value of Top Hat Engineering

We are experts in advanced warehouse automation. Our value is the knowledge we have of many different automated technology systems and how to implement them to ensure our customers are successful. We advocate the right technologies for our customers to ensure they find that success. Each piece of equipment must have the proper integration, intelligence, and reliability to meet our standards. We also do something no other competitor provides: We dedicate our time after an automated system is implemented to ensure our customers are successful.That means tweaking the system to ensure it’s perfected, building the dashboards required for our customers so they have full visibility into the performance of the system, and coordinating with suppliers to ensure maintenance teams have the tools, parts, and training to keep the system operational. We know that automation is intimidating but allow the experts at Top Hat Engineering help you to evaluate, and implement, the technologies that can propel your operational capability to the next level!

Trust in the experts at Top Hat Engineering and contact us today at sales@tophatengineering.com or call us at (813) 588-3398 ext. 101