The Material Handling Blog

Parts Town needed a way to get ahead of their 30 percent year over year growth. Order printouts and manual push carts bustling from one side of the warehouse to another just wasn’t working anymore. Wanting to embrace their success without sacrificing their promise to customers of same-day delivery, Parts Town turned to Bastian Solutions. It was time to envision a new approach and make better use of their space.

Various goods-to-person technologies have risen to the challenge of social distancing by creating naturally spaced workstations for employees and allowing companies to continue their business momentum. In some cases, ramping up to match shifts like we’ve seen in ecommerce. In Q3 2020, about $1 in every $5 was spent on online sales, according to U.S. Commerce Department retail data.

Era sólo cuestión de tiempo para que los proveedores logísticos, los integradores y las diferentes empresas multinacionales empezaran a buscar maneras de aprovechar esta tecnología.

As the global effects of COVID-19 continue to play out, demand for contactless shopping via eCommerce is increasing putting pressure on fulfillment. Businesses are scrambling to identify opportunities to increase supply across their distribution networks. Many are seeking support from automation systems integrators (conveyor, robotics, software, controls) across several fulfillment sites at once. While multi-site implementations can be challenging, when executed successfully they can achieve greater results than single-site implementations.

Automated guided vehicles (AVGs) and autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) are transforming the way manufacturing and distribution centers operate. They are easier than ever to integrate into your operations and are currently seeing a significant boost in adoption.

Although 2020 has been an unpredictable year with unprecedented commerce demands, this year worldwide ecommerce sales have already increased by 18% more than last year. That’s $3.5 trillion USD, according to Shopify. And, it’s expected to nearly double by 2023 to more than $6.5 trillion. Chances are that planning was already underway to shift processes to accommodate for the expected growth in ecommerce before the COVID-19 pandemic hit. However, the state of the world during the pandemic greatly shortened the time frame in which updates and changes needed to be made. Companies everywhere scrambled to quickly pivot based on their unique situations.

With the advent of cube storage solutions, non-traditional ASRS have become more prevalent. In certain applications, the cube storage solution can be denser (smaller facility footprint) and less expensive than traditional ASRS.

This supply chain evolution has created the need for hyper-local fulfillment, which also comes with its own challenges. Customers expect things like free or low-cost shipping, same or next day delivery, hassle-free returns and inventory to be always in stock, just to name a few.

Bastian Solutions’ Supply Chain Explained: LIVE webinar series continued with Robert Humphry, manager of systems sales taking a look at the complicated industry of frozen and refrigerated goods.

Our second webinar of the Supply Chain Explained: LIVE series featured advice from Bastian Solutions’ Director of Consulting, Jason Tenorio, on challenges everyone in the B2B warehousing world is facing. The country has seen a large increase in onshoring due to international transportation issues, along with shutdowns or extreme volume losses in the food service, retail and entertainment industries. In some situations, B2B warehouses are being converted to ecommerce shipping sites, and are being asked to drop-ship direct to consumer orders. We’ve also seen an increase in labor shortages and turnover rates – making it that much harder to meet demand.

In the first installment of our Supply Chain Explained: LIVE webinar series, Director of National Accounts Matt Kuper discussed the massive impact that the COVID-19 pandemic has had on the ecommerce supply chain. With retailers shifting to more online sales, grocers managing more buy online, pick up in store (BOPIS) orders, and supply chain interruptions across the globe hindering the ability to order parts or products, we saw a major shift in buying patterns for both B2B and B2C.

'Business Intelligence' and 'Analytics' are buzzwords in our society. Any google trend search will show the rise of these buzzwords over the last 15 years. Everyone wants to make smart business decisions based on the data that they have; and everyone wants to know that they have made smart business decisions - and how to improve on those decisions. This is especially true in the automated warehousing industry as these systems need to produce an ROI to justify the expense of implementation.