With the increased demand for direct-to-customer shipments for anyone in the retail supply chain, there has been a radical growth from bulk fulfillment to B2C direct-to-end customer (a 45% increase).
Direct-to-customer workflows are required at retail distribution centers (DC's), eCommerce fulfillment centers, wholesale distributor DC's, and even manufacturers and their DC's/warehouses.
These direct-to-customer shipments have resulted in a need for more dynamic scheduling and optimization of labor intensive picking processes within warehouse operations.
Adopting more efficient warehouse and store-level processes was the most-cited pressure (70% overall) for managers to address profitability and reduce operation expenses.
Cost concerns under these growing pressures puts a spotlight on prioritizing profitable fulfillment and efficient work execution in the distribution center. The challenge is, how to do you get more complex, diverse orders picked with less labor hours, given the limitation of existing infrastructure systems?
Few companies can afford to rip and replace their entire distribution network to fully automate their fulfillment process, or duplicate the inventory just to support direct-to-customer shipment.