The need to engage the average warehouse worker with technology has intensified dramatically, says Lori Keston, sales account executive at Generix Group North America.

For years, Keston has said that few people want to work in what she calls a “stupid” warehouse. Today, as she surveys the labor shortage, she feels almost no one wants to be employed in such a place.

“Stupid,” she says, refers to a warehouse that is not technically enabled. “It’s not an inappropriate term. There are many companies adopting technology, material handling equipment, robotics and so forth.” Because such facilities will still require some human labor for years to come, managers will have to “engage” workers, and that will be done by making the right technology available.

What does today’s human worker in the warehouse look like? “As you're deploying new technologies, you should look for a gamer,” Keston says. “Gamers have grown up using technology that looks a lot like the technology in warehouses. They're predisposed to thinking about, How do we get better? How do I get to the next level? That mindset makes a perfect super user of a warehouse management system.”

That kind of employee is not afraid of making changes, she says. “The old idea of a static system that you set and don't change is gone.”

So where is the WMS space going? “I would say we need to move to resource management. Is it a human, is it a robot, is it material-handling equipment — what are we actually managing? Synchronizing what happens in a warehouse across these entities and functions such as product handling, shipping and packing requires a smooth flow. I've been in a lot of facilities that have a bumpy flow. So a resource management system as a part of a WMS is what I see becoming more in demand.”