By the same period, 81% of organizatins are planning to invest in new technologies to be competitive. 31% plan to utilize full automation by 2024
Zebra’s latest Warehousing Asia Pacific Vision Study reveals an increasing dependence of automation and machine learning going forward from 2019 to 2024. As per the study across geographies, 32% of the companies would use robotics and bots, 31% would use Droids and Drones and 33% of the companies would use autonomous vehicles. Similarly, by the same time, 51% of organizations would use handheld mobile computers with scanners, handheld barcode scanners 56%, rugged tablets 69%, Mobile Barcode and Thermal Printers 66%, and wearable Computers 72%.
The study analyzes IT and operations decision makers from manufacturing, transportation and logistics, retail, post and parcel delivery and wholesale distribution industries for their current and planned strategies to modernize warehouses, distribution centers and fulfillment centers
“Warehousing, distribution and fulfillment operations are undergoing a modern-day makeover as they transform to meet the growing needs of the world’s on-demand economy. Warehouse leaders today are turning to technology to address business critical challenges resulting from this global phenomenon, by adopting advanced technology and empowering their workers with a performance edge. Expanding space, implementing new processes and enhancing workflows are only part of the equation. By 2024, warehouse leaders will be shifting their focus to the integration of more holistic solutions to build data-powered environments that balance labor and automation in the warehouse, ultimately empowering front-line workers with a performance edge to lead the way,” said Aik Jin, Tan, APAC Vertical Solutions Lead, Manufacturing and Transportation & Logistics, Zebra Technologies.
The study reports on the forward-thinking fulfillment strategies that companies are focusing on to keep up with the growth of the on-demand economy. Both automation and worker augmentation solutions will be a key focus for decision makers’ plans over the next five years. More than three-quarters of respondents agree that augmenting workers with technology is the best way to introduce automation in the warehouse, but only 34 percent have a clear understanding of where to start automating. Currently, up to 88 percent of decision makers are either in the process of or are planning to expand the size of their warehouses by 2024. Meanwhile, up to 85 percent anticipate an increase in the number of warehouses during this timeframe.
Speaking exclusively to SME Channels on modernization and labor force employment, Deep Agarwal, Regional Sales Director – Indian Sub – Continent, Zebra Technologies Asia Pacific, said, “The idea here is not to replace labor. I don’t think we are in that kind of environment yet. The idea is how we can make the workforce more productive. And, as the economy grows, there will be more and more manufacturing and warehousing facilities so, the idea is just not to replace them. We all have this fear when robots will come, what would happen? I don’t think we’ve seen robots or automation affecting manpower. So, we are trying to make operations more efficient by the use of technology. So that they can be more productive. If you can see just from the chat from the studies that we have, actually automation helps to release the workers to actually do more meaningful job. So if you can see there are some parts of the workforce or even some parts of the jobs already being leveraged by the robotics. And those parts are like say for examples, dangerous zone. We don’t want humans to actually step into it or repeat the kind of jobs. Those like heavy lifting’s kind of jobs that we actually replaced with robots so that the manpower was actually being relieved. To actually do effective or even higher value jobs having to say that robots too being created by human.“
He added, “I see a lot of these are auto storage, auto retrieving kind of environment. So yes, I press the little buttons the assets will come to me, but ultimately we know what they need men powers to actually stand by 24 by seven for eight hour shift to achieve, to maintain the whole system. And not only that, when it come true, they still make the posts to actually get it, scan it, and then to actually pass on to the next stage. So I will say that it is not meant to replace human actually to act, to let do believe that humans to do some more meaningful jobs.”
Answering to a question from Nidhi Shail of SME Channels about security breaches, Deep, answered, “Our scope is to create and upload data into the hospital database. I’m sure most hospitals have their own IT security policies and ways of tracing the security breaches and vulnerability.”
However, Zebra has a tie – up with Google to protect the app over cloud in android platform.
