The Material Handling Blog

When we think about material handling automation, we often picture large-scale systems requiring significant capital and time investments. Yet, small-scale integrations can deliver transformative results for targeted challenges, offering a path to efficiency that many organizations overlook. Entry-level automation can substantially improve efficiency, accuracy, and scalability—all without overhauling the entire operation and minimizing the risk to the business. These solutions are about doing more with what you have, like incorporating carton flow racking to streamline picking or ergonomic packing stations to enhance worker efficiency, unlocking untapped potential, and preparing for future growth.

Imagine this: Your Fulfillment Director tasks you with specifying a new sorter and conveyor system capable of doubling current capacities. Where do you begin? Conveyor and sortation systems are engineered solutions. Like most engineering challenges, the solution's effectiveness hinges on the quality of its inputs. Accurate, detailed data ensures the system is tailored to your specific business requirements and product specifications.

Labor and resource planning has always been a moving target. Even the most well-run warehouse or fulfillment center can struggle to match staffing levels with demand. When the right people aren’t available at the right time, delays stack up, costs rise, and service levels slip. Operations teams are up against a familiar set of challenges like fluctuating order volumes, high turnover, and inefficient workflows that create bottlenecks. In the 2024 MHI Annual Industry Report, more than half of material handling leaders cite talent shortages—hiring and retaining qualified workers—as one of their biggest challenges, ranking it as very or extremely difficult to manage. Scaling up often means adding temporary workers or increasing overtime, but that’s not a sustainable strategy. How work is structured and allocated has just as much impact on efficiency as the number of workers on the floor. Material handling automation provides a way to stabilize operations, improve labor efficiency, and optimize resources without relying on constant hiring cycles. But before looking at the solutions, it’s important to understand where the biggest inefficiencies emerge and why workforce planning remains a challenge.

Your warehouse is running smoothly until an unexpected spike in orders disrupts fulfillment. A key shipment misses its deadline, triggering customer frustration, refunds, and cancellations. The delay escalates into a chain reaction of operational issues, leading to financial penalties, lost revenue, and reputational damage. Warehouse staff scramble to recover lost time, but the ripple effect reaches customer service teams, supply chain planners, and even corporate leadership. What should have been a routine fulfillment process turns into a costly and disruptive challenge.

E-commerce and retail are evolving fast, and small to medium-sized businesses are at the center of that growth. The U.S. alone is home to nearly 14 million e-commerce sites, accounting for 53% of all online retail sites globally. As more businesses move online, the competition to fulfill orders quickly and efficiently intensifies. In fact, small and medium-sized businesses expect their e-commerce sales to grow year-over-year. With growth comes challenges: How do you fulfill rising order volumes quickly and accurately without adding more labor or expanding physical space? Large-scale warehouse automation has long been the answer for enterprise operations, but for smaller businesses, automation has often felt out of reach—too complex, too expensive, and too overwhelming. That’s changing.

When Maurice’s, a women’s retail fashion brand, set out to reimagine its distribution strategy, it turned to GEODIS, a global leader in third-party logistics, to bring its vision to life. Tasked with designing and managing a 404,000-square-foot omnichannel distribution center, GEODIS needed a fulfillment system that could handle retail replenishment, direct-to-consumer shipping, and buy-online-pick-up-in-store (BOPIS) orders—all while keeping up with rising customer expectations and order volumes. To tackle these challenges, GEODIS sought a solution to deliver high-throughput capabilities and adapt to future growth. Their search led them to AutoStore, a proven order fulfillment technology, and Bastian Solutions, a trusted integrator with extensive experience in implementing automated systems. Through this collaboration, GEODIS and Bastian Solutions created a cutting-edge distribution center that balances speed, flexibility, and efficiency. With AutoStore at its core, the facility is equipped to meet the demands of today’s fast-paced retail logistics environment while remaining ready to scale for what’s ahead.

When designing a material handling automation solution, success often comes down to choosing the right pieces that fit together seamlessly. That’s the value of working with an experienced integrator: finding the optimal combination of technologies to meet your operational goals.

As retail e-commerce continues to evolve, the pressure to adapt and scale efficiently has never been greater. Companies must meet increasing consumer demand while grappling with real estate constraints, workforce shortages, and fluctuating order volumes. Flexibility is critical in an industry where fast, efficient delivery can make or break customer loyalty. For one leading specialty retailer, keeping up with this dynamic environment required a quick fix and a long-term growth strategy. Since 2014, their partnership with Bastian Solutions has helped them stay ahead of these challenges. From optimizing their distribution center (DC) to managing the complexities of fulfillment and seasonal demand, Bastian provided the right mix of expertise and technology to help them scale without unnecessary overhead.

In today's dynamic business landscape, companies face numerous external challenges such as ever-expanding competitive landscapes, supply chain issues and changing customer demands. To overcome these and improve their internal processes, businesses are increasingly adopting TOC (Theory of Constraints) principles. This blog presents a compelling real-world application of TOC at one of the world's leading home appliance suppliers. This case study not only underscores the effectiveness of TOC but also provides practical insights on how these principles can significantly boost operational efficiency.

You’re walking into a bustling warehouse, where the air buzzes with the orchestrated hum of voices, footfalls and equipment. In one corner, various SKUs are received and swiftly stored, each item finding its place. Across the floor, synchronized activity surrounds order fulfillment: items are picked, packed and ready for their journey to customers or stores. This is material flow and it plays a vital role in distribution operations.

All inbound and outbound warehouse operations such as receiving, putaway, picking or packing, for example, formulate a series of dependent events. These events occur in sequence and are, to some extent, interlinked to the events preceding or following them.

Order fulfillment operations play a crucial role in today's fast-paced world, where customers expect their orders to be processed and delivered quickly and accurately. With the increasing demand for seamless and efficient order fulfillment services, businesses are turning to innovative solutions to meet the needs of their customers. One such solution is the use of robotic buffer systems.