Sheds of Innovation

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We know, it’s difficult to imagine a grey, featureless shed, devoid of the typical meeting rooms and offices, and with no real centres of innovation or product design, as a potential hub for innovation and growth. 

But please note that the new tech world is elevating the role of the warehouse from logistics center to a more intelligent and innovative core business environment.

Fork! What's Lifting It?

Here are the 4 emerging trends driving warehousing transformation.

1️⃣ Adaptive Warehousing - Per recent studies, over 65% of consumers chose an e-commerce vendor based on delivery options, and 54% consider fast shipping to be two days or less. 

This necessitates modern warehouses to become adaptable and smart, capable of harnessing evolving technologies to outperform the competition - which is nothing but another warehouse in the neighbourhood. 

2️⃣ Packaging Evolution Centres - Per Morgan Stanley, Amazon, UPS and FedEx combined is expected to soon deliver 15 billion packages per year, having a significant impact on packaging methods and material. 

This is because optimization of the package itself, along with tracking, becomes critical to ensure that packages reach their destination and are not lost or damaged somewhere in the warehouse.

3️⃣ Look Ma, Robots - With human lives becoming increasingly dependent on logistics, warehouses are becoming active participants in creating value moments, using delivery and sorting robots. 

Today, these bland sheds are centres of knowledge for determining which products or combinations of products are working for customers and how to automatically order and ship spare parts, for example, untouched by human hands. 

4️⃣ Edge Computing - Smart warehousing today is integrating new physical and analytical technologies to realize a host of benefits, including faster problem resolution, improved labour efficiency and operational scalability, cheaper and faster delivery, supply chain visibility, the ability to predict and better adapt to business demands and much more.

Perhaps the next time you pass a giant grey shed on a road trip down the highway, you could remember some of this and tell your friends why those 'hangars' need to be shown a little more respect.