Monty McVaugh, head of products with Opex Corporation, tackles two major challenges in the warehouse today: the chronic labor shortage, and demand by customers for ever-faster order fulfillment.

Labor availability in warehouses today “is a multi-faceted problem,” McVaugh says. Even before the COVID-19, it was becoming increasing difficult to find enough people to carry out the repetitious tasks that are common to distribution facilities. When the pandemic hit, even more people stayed home. And now, with demand surging once more, and expected to continue well into the future, “there are not enough people to fulfill needs to get online orders out.”

The dilemma has companies turning to temporary labor to augment the workforce, but that option comes at a premium. The cost per worker is higher, in part because of the need to carry out constant onboarding and training of a workforce marked by high turnover. 

The other option is to adopt automation, which solves the problem of asking humans to carry out traditionally tedious tasks on the plant and warehouse floor. They are then freed up to perform more gratifying work, and as a result are more likely to stay on the job. Automation also serves to support customer demands for much faster order fulfillment.

McVaugh stresses that automation is about “repositioning” labor, not replacing it. The human worker is still needed, albeit requiring a different set of skills. McVaugh likens the trend to the introduction of the automobile, which created the entirely new job of the auto mechanic. The notion of a “lights-out” warehouse, where no human labor is required at all, is “unrealistic,” at least for the foreseeable future, he says.

Automation also expedites the process on onboarding new hires. “You need to bring someone on quickly, and make them effective,” McVaugh says.