The Warehouse Engineering Podcast #5: Gili Ovadia of BionicHIVE
It is not that long ago that friends and colleagues sent me the same video several times a day: A robot drives through the warehouse, then climbs up a seemingly…
Review of Volume Dive and Comparison with AutoStore
Introduction I have been following the cube storage market for some time. It is remarkable how many variations of the original AutoStore concept have emerged in recent years, some with…
Goods-to-Robot Picking: What’s the Catch?
Almost every time I talk to customers about large goods-to-person systems, the conversation eventually turns to robotic picking. So I thought I should summarize some of the key challenges of…
Cube Storage Systems: Market Overview & Comparison
Inspired by the success of AutoStore, a number of entrepreneurs and established vendors have developed their own variations of cube storage systems. In another article, I compared AutoStore to its…
Warehouse Automation for 3PLs
Why Adoption is Slower Than you Might Expect Introduction We are moving more goods from warehouses to consumers than ever before. And the more e-com replaces brick-and-mortar, physical commerce, the…
The Reasons we Automate Slow-movers First
There is a fundamental principle in warehouse automation. And yet, it seems to be poorly understood by many professionals, including logistics engineers, whose job it is to design automated warehouses.…
ABC Analysis with a Twist: Using the Gini Coefficient for Interpretation
Most people in logistics know about Pareto charts and ABC analysis. Some people in logistics know how to read a Pareto chart and how to derive conclusions for the planning of…
Review of Jungheinrich PowerCube and Comparison with AutoStore
Jungheinrich officially unveiled its PowerCube goods-to-person (GtP) order picking system at Logimat 2022 in Stuttgart. This makes Jungheinrich – an established brand name in warehouse equipment – the latest member…
On the Power of “Good Enough”
Sometimes, we see companies with fantastic products – and they fail commercially. Sometimes, we see companies with fantastic products, and they can even solve real problems for real customers – and yet, they fail commercially. Now, there is certainly no shortage of reasons why companies can fail commercially in spite of having fantastic products, and I will not attempt to enumerate and discuss them here. Instead, I would like to highlight only one very specific reason which in my opinion often remains neglected, or even unnoticed altogether: competitors or substitutes that are good enough. Good enough is a very powerful concept. I claim that having a product that is good enough is often preferable to having a product that is superior. Let’s have a look at three examples of products or systems in the warehouse automation industry that are failing to meet commercial expectations through the lenses of “good enough”.
Combining Goods-to-Person Picking with Zone Picking Systems
In this article, we want to explore the combination of goods-to-person (GtP) picking systems with zone picking systems. This particular solution design will be discussed in the context of high-performance picking requirements – systems that will have to cope with strong customer demand, i.e., several thousand orderlines per hour. Combining GtP picking with zone picking counts as advanced solution design; it is nothing a warehouse operator should aim for with a warehouse automation provider with no prior experience with that solution design. First, we will look into the reasons as to why you combine these two picking systems (as opposed to just using one). Then, we will discuss control aspects of this solution. Finally, we will explore if there are restrictions with respect to the choice of the specific automated storage and retrieval system (AS/RS) one would use to power the GtP picking system.
