The Material Handling Blog

The fierce competition for warehouse space and fulfillment labor combined with growing customer demands and ever-evolving technology offerings can make it overwhelmingly noisy and difficult to navigate. That challenge can make it hard to identify the solution that will help companies meet business objectives today and in the future. To add to that complexity, the supply chain industry is ever-growing and evolving. Our team of engineers can help guide through the noise that companies may be facing. Bastian Solutions is eager to attend this year’s ProMat tradeshow March 20-23, 2023, to discuss some of these supply chain challenges with attendees.

The New England area is well known as a center for academics, medicine, and high-tech manufacturing. The concentration of notable academic institutions is a big factor in the concentration of companies providing pharmaceutical and high-tech manufacturing. Each of New England’s leading industries requires unique considerations. For this post, let’s take a look at the pharmaceutical industry, specifically. Examples of pharmaceutical and healthcare companies located in New England include the Thermo Fischer headquarters, 3 R&D sites for Pfizer, multiple facilities for Johnson & Johnson, and a multitude of hospitals such as Massachusetts General Hospital.

Recently, Bastian’s Autonomous Vehicles General Manager, Michael Marcum, spoke with other industry experts about insights on getting started with mobile robotics.

Peak season is here. While Black Friday and Cyber Monday, the biggest sales days of the year, have come and gone, order fulfillment operations are busy ensuring that orders are filled accurately, packaged carefully and shipped on time. For retailers, this is both a time of getting through the peak and also an opportunity to shine ahead of competitors. Handling seasonal peaks requires automation that simplifies the surge in distribution.

Bastian Solutions’ team of engineers can help guide you through your automation journey. You can schedule an in-person meeting to discuss your operational challenges with our experts at Pack Expo International 2022 – October 23 – 26, 2022.

In a recent webcast, Matt Kohler, Bastian Solutions’ Applications Director, and other industry leaders discussed how both online and traditional retailers can take advantage of automation as peak season approaches. A key topic discussed during the webcast was the importance of collecting and analyzing data to provide timely and actionable insights for customers.

Facing increased customer demand, space limitations and limited labor resources, Friesens Corporation knew they needed to challenge themselves to think creatively about their production efficiency. Increased demand and volume necessitated higher throughput that only more binding lines could accommodate, creating constraints on the existing floorplan and layout. Finding space meant taking a closer look at their production processes.

Como integradora independente, a Bastian Solutions trabalha com diversas tecnologias e marcas. Como tal, não é incomum ser perguntado pelos clientes: “Quantas linhas por hora posso fazer com um sistema de goods to person?” Quando falamos de GTP (sistemas de goods to person), isso pode incluir sistemas de AutoStore, Perfect Pick, ASRS, Scallog, Attabotics, Caja Robotics, Kardex, Servus ou Adapto. Todas essas tecnologias oferecem métodos modernos e facilmente escaláveis de atendimento de pedidos, por meio de diferentes configurações tecnológicas e de design. Portanto, quando se trata de responder “quantas linhas por hora posso fazer”, há muitos fatores que entram em jogo, mas há três elementos principais que ajudam a fornecer uma imagem mais clara e fornecer uma taxa estimada de linhas por hora. Vamos explorar isto.

Over two decades ago, the internet made its way into households, retail, and manufacturing environments, providing a foundation for commerce to occur in a more rapid and convenient fashion. Since then, ecommerce has undoubtedly become the platform of choice for procuring everything from household products to industrial equipment. While present strategies such as warehouse execution systems, sortation, rainbow palletizing, and GTP (goods to person) systems have certainly helped meet these aggressive order fulfillment pursuits, a new robotic solution is proliferating the material handling industry that can further improve operations and customer satisfaction.

Bringing products as close and as fast as possible to customers triggered a new way of looking at fulfillment centers. In addition to large regional warehouses, microfulfillment centers (MFCs) are popular topics in retail, ecommerce and food industries. Before implementing any solution, it’s key to carefully review applications and properly prepare for current and future scenarios. This step can help you avoid key mistakes and select the right technology. The last thing you want to do is to install a technology that doesn’t do the job the way you expected or needed.

No matter the industry, demand for products and services is at an all-time high. This increase in demand may leave you wondering how to best maneuver and store materials in your warehouse while remaining productive. More and more operations are configuring their warehouse space to accommodate narrow aisles. Warehouse operations are also choosing to automate systems to allow for more storage space and increased productivity when performing highly standardized, repetitive tasks. Narrow aisle forklifts such as Toyota’s Core Electric Turret Forklift, Order Picker, Stand Up Rider, along with automated solutions such as the Core Tow Tractor and Center-Controlled Rider, may be a great solution for your operation. Discover how automated systems and narrow aisle solutions can help you navigate your warehouse confidently and take your operation to the next level.

In supply chain, decentralization makes it possible to obtain small urban warehouses which help to manage order preparation as close as possible to the end consumer. We are talking about micro-fulfillment warehouses (or micro-logistics platforms), or even nano-fulfillment for the smallest of them.