Digital eyes in the warehouse

AR TECHNOLOGY takes a real-world setting and integrates a layer of digital information to enhance the viewers experience and understanding of the physical object that sits right in front of them. The AR enhancements can include such elements as graphic overlays, technical information, maintenance instructions, simple images and even video, easily accessed via everyday equipment from tablets and smartphones to spectacles and other eyewear. Meanwhile VR, in simple terms, can replace your vision entirely using a fully immersive headset to provide the experience of being in a completely different environment or to provide greater depth to and interaction with your current environment. VR offers the impression of being somewhere entirely different; literally in a virtual world.

The use of AR and VR for our own business has been revolutionary, from concept and engineering design through to installation. As part of our data driven design process, we gather qualitative and numerical insights about performance such as volumetric SKU data, predicted sales patterns, whether from seasonal demand changes, business growth and acquisition or range extensions and feed this into our AI bot E.L.S.A. (Everything Lives somewhere Appropriate). ELSA suggests the optimum design solution that our experienced engineering design team then carry forward, building a digital model that can be trialled and tested, virtually before final presentation. 

Integrating AR and VR technology with this process allows us to design the most efficient warehouse or distribution facility combining the core elements of warehouse planning, inventory management and order picking with a viewable fully interactive 3D layout that demonstrates the most streamlined way to manage inventory and optimise order picking to enhance operational processes within the physical structure. 

By gathering the required data and incorporating the end users’ domain expertise at a much earlier stage in the design process we are able to visualise the resulting benefit in operational efficiency, along with a clear ROI calculation, in ways that wouldn’t have been available previously. Fully interactive design solutions, complete with AMR integrations, can be experience within a digital space using VR technology and commented on at agreed points in the design process with increasing levels of detail to ensure that only the design which is fit for purpose, is actually constructed. 

At no time in our history more than now, does the logistics and supply chain industry rely so heavily on operational efficiencies and the accuracy of data to drive customer service. Far from their perceived status of being ‘too high tech’ and ‘unreachable’ for the SME of today, AR & VR technologies provide an invaluable opportunity to allow customers to virtually experience the space around them, offer operational insights to enhance the design process, as well as identify and resolve any issues long before the first concrete block is laid. 

Harry Watts, managing director, SEC Group

For more information, visit www.sec-storage.co.uk