Cover Story Eileen Mozinski Schmidt
A ‘time to shine’ for warehouses Pandemic conditions have improved, but the new era of labor shortages and increased demand continues for warehouses. In this environment, some say a steady increase of automation within warehouses is occurring. This month, Material Handling Wholesaler talks with industry leaders about how they see automated processes building new opportunities in warehouses across the industry. A ‘time to shine’ for warehouses At AutoScheduler, CEO Keith Moore said the company aims to be “the brain” inside distribution centers. The company launched two years ago inside Procter & Gamble, where Moore said the business founders “cut our teeth.” AutoScheduler.AI is a warehouse resource planning and optimization platform that “dynamically orchestrates all activities on top of your existing warehouse management system in real-time,” the business website said. The solution is designed to focus on and optimize all of a warehouse’s critical activities, including dock scheduling, loading, unloading, case picking, and creation of transfer orders, the site said. “With more supply chain challenges than ever, AutoScheduler combines data from numerous systems into a single operational plan for warehouses and distribution centers. It takes disparate data, identifies bottlenecks, and prescriptively creates plans to orchestrate campus operations for optimized efficiency,” the website said. The aim of the company is to help planning to be more effective, according to Moore, who said today AutoScheduler workers with some of the largest consumer goods providers in the industry. As a solution designed to work on top of a Warehouse Management System to orchestrate plans and processes, AutoScheduler is able to work many moves ahead of what is occurring, according to Moore. He said this is not unlike how technology is now able to orchestrate outcomes in a chess game. In chess, there are 64 squares and 16 pieces under a player’s control, and “since 1997, it has been impossible for a 4
www.MHWmag.com
November 2022
person to beat a computer,” said Moore, noting how many moves ahead a computer can see. Similarly, AutoScheduler is designed to incorporate a bigger picture in coordinating items, people, and equipment. The more complexity, the more opportunity, according to Moore. In the current environment, Moore said he believes inventory concerns for warehouses might “smooth out a bit” but labor will remain in demand. “That’s part of why automation has become so popular over the past few years,” he said, noting there are fewer employees working many years on a job, making it more difficult for companies to build the productivity and consistency desired. “People are understanding they need to do something to get consistent productivity out of the warehouse, to be able to meet the demand in a consistent way,” Moore said. “The challenge is, people that run operations, they’ve been in supply chain and logistics for a while and they’re not technologists,” he said. This is where AutoScheduler can help, according to Moore. He said AutoScheduler solutions help to orchestrate planning systems, making sure all of the processes flow and work together. In general, Moore thinks productivity rates are a little lower today versus five years ago due in part to the impacts of labor shortage. “It’s hard to replace a really experienced forklift driver,” Moore said. That said, he also believes warehousing and operation teams are more innovative now. “Warehouses are probably getting the investment needed,” said Moore, who said there are more technologists and more investment in automation overall. And as focus outside the industry focuses on supply chain and material handling in general, Moore added that it is a “remarkable” industry to work in. “It’s warehousing’s time to shine,” he said. “We can take opportunities and take advantage of what we have to innovate and drive value.”