For all the strategy that goes into E-commerce success, ultimately it comes down to moving the right items and packages to customers quickly and efficiently. If operations can’t identify goods accurately and control the movement of automated material handling equipment with precision and speed, the result is unhappy customers and loss of market momentum.
The challenge is that moving goods isn’t as straightforward as it once was. E-commerce orders are typically at the each or item level, not full cases or pallets.
Packaging is changing too. Instead of boxes with uniform dimensions and edges, there is more use of polybags and shipping envelopes. According to research firm Technavio, polybags accounted for over $31 billion of roughly $82 billion global e-commerce packaging market in 2015 and constituted the fastest growing segment.