The Future of Artificial Intelligence and Warehouse Logistics

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the science of programming machines to be aware of their real or virtual environments and to be deliberate and react to situations the way that a person would.  AI helps distributors expand their business by increasing revenues, logistics, and customer service.  With machines and humanity working together, companies, customers, and personnel can all triumph.

Here we will look at ways that AI can improve the production, efficiency, and safety of your warehouse.  AI provides two common groupings for supply chain manufactured goods:  Augmentation and automation.  Augmentation is when AI assists human beings in their day to day tasks, and automation is when AI functions without human interaction.

Augmented Warehouse

You have most likely heard of virtual reality in the gaming and entertainment industry that immerses a person in a virtual world.  Augmented reality (AR) is like virtual reality except that in AR, the person, in your case, your employee, is not immersed in a virtual world, but rather, it alters what the person sees in his or her reality.  

Are you confused?  No need to be.  Let’s look at some ways that AR applies to everyday tasks in your warehouse for increased safety, knowledge, and protection.

An augmented warehouse system offers an opportunity for AR to make us faster, safer, and smarter.  Yes, there is even an app for that, where a handheld device, like a smartphone, can be used with an application to help locate products in the warehouse, pick a product, and even update inventory numbers by scanning a barcode.

Here are examples that have been analyzed and are functional and available for use now in your warehouse.

• Safety and Quality
• Video and its recordings can allow for a safer and higher quality workplace.
• A supervisor can see if an employee appears fatigued and doesn’t pull defective materials accurately. 
• Use a recorded video to investigate a safety incident. 
• Instead of a supervisor having to follow an employee, which may not always be conducive to the environment, observe an employee remotely to analyze, document, and improve processes.
• If an employee encounters difficulty in the warehouse with processes, they could transmit a video to their supervisor for assistance.
• The use of video and recordings could monitor employees to identify opportunities for training.
• Order Picking
• AR uses “smart glasses” technology, which are digital glasses (like you see with virtual reality) that collect data from external and internal sources to provide information to the user.
• Rather than traditional paper lists, an employee wears a pair of smart glasses.  Smart glasses display a file in the employees’ visual field of the product needed for an order.
• AR technology can also verify that employees pick the correct product by using optical readers to scan bar codes and assists the employee in more efficient picking with greater accuracy.
• With smart glasses, picked items become automatically counted in your inventory.
• Equipment Repair
• AR technology enhances a trained employee’s knowledge base when repairing any equipment, from a conveyor to even heavy machinery.
• Trained employees wear a pair of smart glasses.
• Call an expert who can see, through technology, what the on-site worker sees, enabling the expert to walk the on-site employee through the repair process.
• A trained employee could even access electronic manuals virtually through the smart glasses.
• This technology allows a trained employee to perform hands-on repairs with increased skills and knowledge.

Automated Warehouses

Warehouse automation systems offer an opportunity to uncover routine and repetitive tasks in the warehouse and discover ways to automate those tasks.  There are four layers to automating your warehouse:

• Basic automation uses software applications, scanners, and printed reports.
• System automation uses barcodes with wireless barcode scanners to input and track data System automation digitizes inventory data and integrates that data into your software environment.
• Mechanized automation refers to the use of robotic systems in the warehouse (e.g., conveyors)
• Advanced automation examples include automatic sorters, robotic picking, and palletizers (a machine that provides automated methods for loading cases of goods or products onto a pallet).

Robotics

• Robotic Arms are a type of pick-and-place robot.  The robotic arms are machines with multi-jointed limbs that can turn, move, lift, and maneuver products in warehouses.  
• Robotic arms can function for picking, packing, receiving, storing, and even palletizing products.
• Collaborative Robots (“CoBots”) are mobile robots programmed to help people to perform a variety of tasks throughout the warehouse.
• Can follow human pickers and act as storage bins for picked orders
• Can direct workflow and transport of loads to other warehouse locations
• CoBots have sensors that allow them to distinguish between boxes and obstacles.
• Autonomous Guided Vehicles (AGV)
• Using an AGV in the warehouse industry is full of promises to save money and time and improves safety by reducing accidents. 
• An AGV is a portable robotic vehicle that navigates without a driver throughout the warehouse via floor wires, magnets, lasers, or cameras. Their unique job is to move product throughout your facility.
• Examples of an AGV include forklifts, pallet trucks, and stackers.
• Aerial Drones have astounding potential for the logistics industry.
• Drones use optical systems and learning technology to navigate warehouses from above.
• Drones can give operators a vision field of dangerous and hard to see places making it safer for personnel.
• Drones help to optimize the warehouse inventory processes.
• Drones are currently augmentation robots requiring human assistance.

In logistics, data is collected in massive amounts each second across the globe.  Artificial intelligence transforms data to assist you with your decision process for developing new or improved methods throughout your industry and facility for better efficiency, safety, and increased customer service.

Advanced technology and competition in logistics give pause to consider utilizing AI in your facility seriously.  Strategically, adding AI to your operations can increase your profits and create a safer work environment by optimizing internal material flows.

Post by Paul from PartsBrite.com