With today's fast-paced supply chain and rising consumer demand, it has become a best practice for warehouses to prepare and stage orders prior to the truck's arrival, typically up to 24 hours in advance. While this practice may seem like an effective method of fulfilling orders in a timely and accurate manner, it doesn't take into consideration the possibility that the truck is late, or worse, doesn’t show up at all.

Raj India Trading Co. found itself with a happy problem when it switched from importing bulky flower planters to smaller cremation urns: plenty of empty space at its warehouse in the Seattle suburbs.

For many manufacturers and distributors, a seamless supply chain of highly efficient and tightly integrated business processes sharing a single unified source of accurate real-time data seems an unachievable goal. That's not surprising since such organizations are struggling to gain control over their entire supply chain using a mix of disparate systems that fail to fully mesh with one another creating silos of outdated and unreliable information.

Rapid growth in the worldwide market for warehouse automation and control systems is being driven primarily by the global boom in e-commerce, and its profound effects on fulfillment requirements, according to an ARC Advisory Group market study.

The search for optimal efficiency in the distribution center continues. In this program, we examine a number of cutting-edge concepts in D.C. automation, including mobility management, robotics and the use of horizontal carousels in retail warehouses.