Real deal for retail

WHILE THE boom in eCommerce may have slowed to pre-pandemic levels, it still represents 26% of all retail sales. The stratospheric rise in online purchasing that occurred, has accelerated the trend for warehouse automation installation, with the UK set to become Europe’s largest automation market by 2025, with a market size of $3.8billion.

Despite the current fallback in eCommerce volumes, this may simply be a short term set back as a recent Savills report highlights.  The July 2022 Big Shed Survey suggests the demand for housing and increasing pace of consumer technology, will continue to fuel online growth. The warehouse to homes ratio used by the BPF ‘What Warehouse Where?’ report predicts an additional 21m sq ft of warehouse space for eCommerce alone and the need to stay ahead with latest consumer technology will add to the velocity of eCommerce spending.

This will continue to create a situation where warehouse operators struggle for both space and labour to fulfil the increase in orders. The resulting competition for both labour and warehouse facilities is driving the automation market in the UK. 

However, despite warehouse automation being a solution to assist in picking up this shortfall, it’s long been overlooked by SMEs who deem it too expensive and inflexible to both changing consumer demands and fluctuations in the supply chain. But as technology becomes more mainstream and therefore more affordable, warehouse automation is becoming more attractive to SMEs, with products such as Autonomous Mobile Robots (AMRs) a potential game-changer in the eCommerce markets, as SEC Storage can confirm.

In a typical warehouse environment, AMRs provide automation of key warehouse activities, such as picking, replenishment or sortation. Through the use of advanced SLAM (Simultaneous Localisation & Mapping) technology, AMRs further increase their flexibility in terms of how efficiently they can move throughout the warehouse and also enhance the number of tasks they can complete, including zone picking and goods-to-person. Alongside enhanced pick efficiency and worker safety, operations using AMRs can become more agile to cope with sudden changes in stock or delivery requirements.

With so many obvious benefits, what’s causing the slow take-up? We believe the key to driving implementation of this phenomenally versatile technology, is to demonstrate its flexibility, efficiency levels and ROI within a data-driven, intelligent warehouse design solution.

Through in-depth analysis of operational data using AI and Machine Learning, SEC Storage can accurately create a digital twin of a warehouse facility and demonstrate both operational efficiency in a number of different scenarios, and ROI. This ensures that the final warehouse storage design incorporating deployment of warehouse automation technology, will provide the optimal solution that is universally agreed before anything is built.

One such customer for whom we have designed an innovative, ground-breaking solution with AMRs is non-other than an SME employing less than 100 staff in total, attracted not just by the efficiency, and affordability, but also the flexibility and scalability of this AMR solution. In a highly competitive market such as eCommerce and Retail, implementing innovative warehouse automation technology such as AMRs, could hold the key to having that all important edge needed to secure valuable retail or fulfilment contracts. With all this at your fingertips, what are you waiting for?

Harry Watts, managing director, SEC Storage

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