How Roaming Shuttles Improve Order Fulfillment Operations

Automated material handling solutions offer retail supply chain, distribution, and fulfillment operations a more efficient, productive, and reliable means to address the numerous challenges their operations currently face.

With the rapid expansion of e-commerce as a result of the shutdowns associated with the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic, retailers are coping with continuous changes in customer demand; mis-picks and errors; dynamic inventory churn and growth; perpetually shifting stock keeping unit (SKU) velocities; shortened order cut-off times; shipping carrier capacity limits; and high volumes of returns.

Combine these daily headaches with one of the tightest labor markets ever seen in the U.S., and it’s clear why companies are increasingly investigating — and investing in — automation for their warehousing and distribution facilities.

While a multitude of automated equipment options exist, goods-to-person (GtP) automated storage and retrieval systems (AS/RS) offer operations a comprehensive means to hold, organize, track, and access a large and highly variable volume of vastly different SKU profiles in a highly dense footprint.