Streamlining your fulfilment process is a great way to improve your business, but it depends heavily on having a complete picture of your inventory. Losing customers due to inadequate inventory management and failed fulfilment must be prevented for any business to thrive, be it manufacturing, retail or online.
The best way to avoid this is to upgrade and automate your inventory management. Automation brings increased efficiency and accuracy to your stock records by managing your existing processes in the background of your business, but what processes are they?
Key Elements of Inventory Management
Regardless of your company’s focus, every business’s inventory management needs specific requirements:
- Tracking activity: You will always want to know of any unusual stock movement, from transfers and losses to sales, especially missing stock. Detailed reports and instant answers to questions are essentials that automation can achieve.
- Daily stock counts: Stock checks and counts are essential to prevent errors in fulfilment but can be a lengthy process prone to human error. Embracing automation upgrades such as wireless site surveys can speed up this process immensely.
- Manage out-of-stock products: An item revealed to be out of stock after the customer has placed their order will rarely encourage repeat business. With automation, keeping on top of your inventory levels and managing your replenishment is easy.
- Organised Work Environment: A clean, organised space is helpful for any workplace. Applying this logic to your inventory management with automation will help you reduce your data clutter and help you find the answers you need.
Benefits of Automation
The controlled nature of warehouses management can make implementing automation far easier than in most other work environments. In addition, the variety of ways you can implement automation can help you find the least disruptive way to your current operations.
The significant investment in automation may seem daunting at first but will soon pay off with benefits such as real-time data. In addition, you can quickly mitigate any unanticipated logistical issues in your fulfilment by embracing these high-end stock control solutions across your whole workflow from supply to completion.
Automated solutions will provide centralised data that is constantly being updated. In addition, by letting automation handle routine activities such as stock counting and shipping, you can free up more time for more complex tasks. Thanks to technological upgrades like RFID tag tracking systems, mobile computers and more, business owners can access real-time data they can optimise to suit their current operations.
As described earlier, human error is always possible with manual data management. The biggest threat to any business fulfilment is human error. By embracing automation, you can increase your operational efficiency and free up staff for tasks too complex for automation. When automating simple processes such as wireless site surveys for your inventory counts, you can trust that you’ll get your data quickly and accurately.
Automation can allow you to make faster decisions regarding your business and respond to any disruptions faster. Of course, making decisions quickly is a good idea, but only if you have all the data required to make it. Being able to access your entire database remotely with mobile computers, you can speed up your decisions and increase the speed of any part of your business’s data management thanks to the automated updating of your database.
The Future of Inventory Management
E-commerce is an ever-growing part of business in general. This is because the demands of consumers grow alongside the desire to lower fulfilment costs; automation is leading the way to meet this need worldwide.
Warehouse automated management and superior asset tracking systems to assist them are growing ever more popular. The global warehouse automation market is estimated to increase to $30 billion by 2026. The automation implementation rate was only 8% in 2019, but it is predicted to rise to 45% in 2030.
Automation is estimated to become a staple of any warehouse management in the coming years as more countries increase investments in automation. The UK was the leading spender in warehouse automation and stock control solutions at an estimated average of $451,000 in 2020, with the United States coming in a close second. Additionally, in a global survey conducted by Statista in 2021, one-third of logistics professionals stated that upgrading to an automated warehouse management system was their organisation’s highest priority.
One particularly futuristic idea has the potential to become a reality. Autonomous mobile robots (or AMRs) are devices that can be programmed to perform specific tasks completely unaided. Built with advanced sensors and AI software, these innovative machines have been used to move boxes and pallets and retrieve desired orders.
Streamlined Warehouse Management at GSM Barcoding
At GSM Barcoding, we pride ourselves on our various stock control solutions and other services. With our range of mobile computers, bespoke label designs and inventory management software, we are confident that we can help you with your needs.
If you’re considering implementing automation into your warehouse management, please browse our solutions, including our unique G-Smart software, online and find out how they can help your business in more detail.
