A No-Surprises Operations Budget For The Retail DC?

The modern era of omnichannel retailing delivered the death knell to your father’s retail distribution center. Too complex for the lift-truck-and-box-shuffle of yester year, today’s omnichannel retail environment demands sophisticated automation to meet the customer’s speed- and accuracy of-fulfillment expectations.

The automated material handling systems that facilitate the intricacies of today’s DCs and fulfillment centers are complex infrastructures, comprised of robotically aided, software-driven, efficiency-enabling technology that simply didn’t exist a decade ago.

Though their necessity is obvious and their payback significant, the price tag hanging on modern automated material handling systems is often hefty, and their ongoing cost of operation very difficult to predict. A handyman with a toolbox, after all, can’t maintain the integration of sophisticated software and cutting-edge robotic technology.

Thus, the costs associated with the service and support of automated material handling systems has become something of a wild card. Traditional methods of calculating ROI and payback—the simple division of the cost of the project by the annual cost savings that the project provides—no longer apply.