How do you modernize a warehouse with new technology without disrupting what's already working? Eric Hilton, director of enterprise sales and solutions with DecisionPoint Technologies, offers some advice.

With so many technologies now available for improving operations in the warehouse, it’s tempting to treat them as an opportunity for “massive transformation,” Hilton says. But that’s the wrong way to approach it.

More success in adopting technology can be realized by making “small incremental” steps toward automating discrete parts of the supply chain, then realizing progressive gains that add up to a dramatic impact in the end.

Operations first need to determine what problems they’re trying to solve over the long term, and how their decisions are going to impact the enterprise as a whole. But the journey to that objective takes place in smaller stages.

Along the way, warehouses need to be constantly supporting and augmenting their existing workflows, realizing incremental efficiencies. What they shouldn’t be doing is “implementing technology for technology’s sake.”

The more careful approach can help warehouse managers sell the whole concept of technology investment to the C-suite. Each a small success can lead to adoption of the next, with a steady return on investment throughout the initiative.

One major selling point, Hilton says, is the ability of current warehouse technology to help facilities deal with a chronic shortage of human labor, and the transient nature of many of the workers who are hired. They can be trained more quickly, so that managers “can maximize their output on day one.”