The Material Handling Blog

The need for third-party logistics companies (3PLs) has grown significantly over the past few years. In fact, Third-Party Logistics Warehouse Benchmark Report noted that 85% of 3PLs experienced order growth in 2021. With the increased demand for ecommerce fulfillment and varied distribution channels, more and more companies do not wish to manage the varied distribution expectations. Realizing these challenges, many of those companies are now looking to experienced 3PLs to provide the logistics.

Putting a bag on a pallet and conveying it is a simple enough concept; however, the variations in product must always be kept in mind if you want to prevent product damage and misaligned pallets. Here are five points to remember when using bag palletizing systems... Read More >>

India is welcoming the festive season and ready to celebrate with great enthusiasm while adapting to the new normal brought on by the pandemic. Festive months are generally a time to indulge in heavy shopping, which increases our budget spent in light of the ongoing festive vibe and running promotional sales offers. Festive season 2021 is expected to bring numerous opportunities for retailers and ecommerce companies. Festive sale offers have already begun and with buyers becoming more comfortable with online shopping, Forrester Research expects online retailers to generate about $9.2 billion in sales during this period. That’s a 42 percent year over year increase from their evaluation of $6.5 billion in festival months sales during 2020. We are excited to witness this exponential jump in India’s ecommerce market. As per the estimates by RedSeer Consulting, ecommerce platforms such as Flipkart and Amazon India got $2.7 billion in the first four days of festive sales that began on 2 October 2021. The excitement with festive promotional sales offers will create massive online traffic, impact product sales and company turnover, and put enormous pressure on companies’ supply chain processes. Companies might equate the ecommerce platform as the “brain” and the supply chain as its “heart”. Both must perform in tandem to fully meet and satisfy customer expectations. Festive months are a crucial period when companies can make a lasting, positive impact on consumers.

In the world of automated and material handling systems integration time is money and using time efficiently is the key to success. We are continually tasked with achieving more results in less time, whether that be in reduced engineering design time in the office, condensed panel build and installation schedules or accelerated commissioning and testing on site. It sure would be nice if there was a single tool that could address all these asks and more, wouldn’t it? There is. Enter the concept of the “digital twin” - warehouse automation controls emulation.

In today’s global market – facing an acceleration in ecommerce and managing the impact of the Coronavirus pandemic – flexibility is not only key, but a necessity. The flexibility to scale up or down and use automation where it fits best in order to help to maintain a leading edge in the industry markets. Facilitating greater speed, agility and adaptability in warehouse distribution and order fulfillment, Tompkins Robotics’ solutions are designed to allow customers to be more successful in dynamically changing environments. In 2019, Bastian Solutions added Tompkins Robotics’ autonomous mobile robot (AMRs) solution to our growing portfolio of automation capabilities. We talked to Mike Futch, the CEO and President of Tompkins Robotics, for a deeper insight on the technology and future of DC automation development.

“Quite frankly, we were gonna burst.” Sports company PUMA was not only quickly outgrowing their primary U.S. ecommerce distribution center in California, they were also facing increasing pressures in the rapidly evolving and growing North America ecommerce retail market. And, this was prior to the rapid ecommerce growth triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic. Looking to reach their east coast customers faster and more efficiently, a new automated warehouse was planned and opened in 2020 in Indianapolis, Indiana.

Richelieu souhaite améliorer la satisfaction des 90 000 clients et plus qu’ils servent au Canada et aux États-Unis en exécutant les commandes de façon plus rapide et fiable. À titre d’importateur, de distributeur et de fabricant de matériel spécialisé de calibre mondial, Richelieu gère plus de 130 000 UGS. En plus d’une approche qui vise à uniformiser et à accélérer l’exécution des commandes, Richelieu a été en mesure de consolider le stockage externe en tirant profit de ses installations à Montréal. Elle s’est tournée vers Bastian Solutions pour obtenir des conseils et pour mettre en place la bonne combinaison de technologie d’automatisation pour augmenter la durée de vie de l’installation de Richelieu et mettre en place un système qui l’aide à maintenir de façon constante un service à la clientèle de grande qualité.

The Director of Fulfillment assigns you a project to specify a new sorter and conveyor system that’s capable of ‘doubling’ current capacities. Where do you start? First, start by understanding and challenging the true sortation and system requirements. Conveyor and sortation systems are engineered solutions. Like most engineering problems, the solution is typically only as good as its inputs. Accurate data upfront ensures the solution is tailored to your individual business requirements and product specifications.

Serving more than 80,000 customers in both Canada and the United States, Richelieu aimed to increase customer satisfaction with faster, reliable order fulfillment. As an international importer, distributor and manufacturer of specialty hardware, Richelieu manages over 110,000 SKUs. In addition to a faster and more streamlined order fulfillment approach, Richelieu was able to consolidate external storage by leveraging their Montreal facility. They looked to Bastian Solutions to advise and implement the right combination of automation technology to add to Richelieu’s facility longevity and implement a system that helps them reliably maintain strong customer service.

Put walls aren’t new but their many operational benefits continue to stand out and help drive distribution center efficiencies, despite some common drawbacks. For companies with high order commonality and batch picking, put walls can easily have a dramatic impact to picking labor. Put walls are simply shelving units with several cubbies of the same or varying sizes, dependent on the orders being processed. Modern units have light indicators at the front and back of the wall to help direct operators to pick and put items.

In order to maximize your return on investment (ROI) for a robotic system, it is vital that you optimize the tasks that the robot is assigned. If the rate at which the robot handles product does not completely utilize the robot’s capabilities, you just might be leaving opportunities on the table. Analyzing the tasks, rates and capabilities can help not only maximize the robotic system but also help reduce the need for ancillary equipment and additional investments, creating a more streamline operation.

Pick, pack and ship is fairly straightforward but with increasing pressures to process orders faster and faster, these tasks can give your company a competitive edge. When I’m looking at a customer’s distribution center, there are certain indicators I look for to try to find improvement opportunities. For a company that processes ecommerce orders, pick totes are at the top of that list. While they’re sometimes necessary, they’re often a red flag for underlying operational inefficiencies. However, these inefficiencies are easily remedied through a combination of process flow updates and new automation. These projects often have a fantastic ROI, paying back the initial investment in one to two years. To top it off, they’re easy choices for our customers to implement.