Bridging the Gap: Overcoming Barriers to Business Automation

According to data from Gartner, it's estimated that up to 70 percent of all organizations will adopt some automation this year. That's up about 20 percent based on estimates from 2021, just a mere four years ago. However, many businesses still aren't implementing automation at the rate that makes a truly significant difference to their business.

There are many good reasons to integrate new, automated solutions into your workplace environment. When automation is incorporated in the right way, it can help enhance efficiency, improve accuracy, reduce costs, and provide a more comfortable work environment for personnel.  Given these advantages, why are so many businesses still so hesitant to take the plunge and go all-in on automation?

In this post, we'll discuss the benefits of automated solutions, some of the key challenges of integrating such solutions, and some of the various solutions to consider for your business. Read on for more information or contact Daifuku, a global leader in automation and material handling solutions, today.

Key Benefits of Integrating Automation

When automation is intelligently integrated into your business, the end result is significant. Here's a closer look at some of the major benefits of automated solutions:

• Streamlined workflows: Automated solutions can help simplify repetitive tasks, thereby freeing up human workers to plug in on bigger-picture functions.

• Enhanced efficiencies: Time equals money and any opportunity to improve efficiency can help speed up time to market and improve your bottom line. Automation can help accelerate such processes.

• Fewer mistakes: Humans are bound to make mistakes, but too many mistakes can lead to delays, product returns, fees, lost sales, and an erosion of consumer trust. Automation can virtually eliminate human error and better ensure that any programmed tasks are completed effectively and accurately.

• Cost reductions: Automation can help your business reduce labor costs, lower overall operational costs, reduce required building footprint, as well as cut down on any costly errors.

• Improved overall employee satisfaction: Automation can help promote a safer and more ergonomic workplace environment, making for happier employees. With automation taking over or augmenting certain tasks, workers are less likely to succumb to stress and burnout and can achieve a healthier overall work-life balance.  Finding and training good employees is a constant challenge. Providing a pleasant work environment helps to keep turnover low and assure you are properly staffed to meet your business needs.

Considering all of these benefits, why are so many businesses not going all-in on automation? In many cases, they don't know where to start.

Challenges of Integrating Automated Solutions and How to Overcome Them

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High upfront cost, complexity of integrating solutions to your existing facilities, and concerns about changes to company culture are some common barriers to investing in automated solutions.  The key to overcoming these hurdles is to be sure you are identifying the right tasks to optimize in your operation.

Start by thoroughly examining all your current processes and identifying the key issues that you hope to resolve when adopting automated solutions.  Look for processes requiring large amounts of staff, tasks that are unpopular with your employees due to high difficulty or physical demands, places in your operation where errors frequently occur, and bottleneck sections that make it difficult for you to meet your deadlines.

Once you have identified what problems you would like to solve, work with a reliable partner, like Daifuku, to help assess your environment and better determine which automation solutions you could benefit from.  Daifuku routinely collaborates with Customers to help evaluate operations, analyze inventory and order data, and step through the vast array of automation technologies available to construct the most beneficial solutions for our partners.

From there, you can choose which solutions to implement to best suit your needs.  Automation can even be phased in gradually if it makes sense for your budget and operational requirements in the upcoming years.

Solutions to Consider

There is a plethora of automated solutions that can make a difference in your warehouse, manufacturing facility, or distribution center to help you realize many of the benefits that we have outlined. Some of the leading solutions that we're seeing being integrated into such environments include:

• Automated Storage and Retrieval Systems: ASRS systems help automate product storage and retrieval, while also optimizing floor space, which is often at a premium in warehouse environments. These systems can be designed to handle pallets, cases, or totes and offer high inventory accuracy, dense storage, decreased footprint, and high throughput.

• Goods To Person:  GTP technology brings the inventory to the worker for order fulfillment.  This increases productivity and eliminates the requirement for your employees to walk or drive to reach the inventory required to fill orders.  GTP stations can be coupled with various types of inventory automation.

• Automated Guided Vehicles: AGVs help transport goods throughout a warehouse by following predefined paths or programmed guidance systems. AGVs help improve efficiency, reduce labor costs and streamline what would otherwise be a tedious, repetitive task.

• High Speed Sortation:  Unit sorters and high speed shoe sorters are utilized to directly fulfill orders, cross dock inventory through your facility, or sort work to different areas of your automation system or different areas of your warehouse.

• Robotics: Robotics can help increase efficiency, accuracy, and safety in any type of warehouse or distribution center, helping fulfill orders faster and reduce operational costs. Robots can also scale to meet evolving business needs.

Contact Daifuku Today

For more information on the benefits you can realize when you intelligently integrate automated solutions into your warehouse environment and to learn more about the industry-leading solutions available, contact Daifuku today. As a world leader in innovative automated material handling solutions, we're standing by and ready to partner with your company to start implementing the solutions that make the most sense to the success of your operations. Contact us today to learn more.

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