Developing a Winning Strategy for IoT Integration in Smart Warehouse Management
By Mr Sriram Nagaswamy
With the emergence of the Internet of Things (IoT), there’s a new dawn of efficiency, connectivity, control, and visibility, especially in warehouse management. Recent data reveals that the IoT market is expected to reach $1.6 trillion by 2025, implying significant cost savings, increased operational efficiency, and productivity. The technology continues to revolutionize the supply chain, with smart warehouses in the making.
The Indian e-commerce landscape in particular presents a unique challenge for traditional warehousing methods. While these methods have long been the backbone of global trade, they struggle to meet the lightning-fast delivery expectations of the modern Indian consumer. A significant portion (around 38%) expect deliveries within 2 hours, a trend further amplified by the burgeoning quick commerce sector offering groceries within minutes. However, physical stores retain their charm, with nearly half of Indian consumers preferring an in-store experience, particularly for clothes and electronics. To bridge this gap and create a winning online shopping experience, warehouses must embrace the transformative power of IoT. Real-time inventory tracking, optimized order fulfillment processes, and strategic locations closer to customer clusters are all crucial to meeting these demands. By leveraging these insights and adopting IoT solutions, warehouses can ensure a swift and satisfying online shopping experience for today’s discerning consumer.
Smart Warehouses, Smarter Quality Control: The Rise of IoT-driven Quality Management
Acting as a boon, IoT today has made it feasible for warehouse managers to track inventories in real time with intelligent sensors for tangible commodities and by helping establish a networked ecosystem throughout the supply chain. Significant variables like temperature, humidity, handling speed and position can be fetched in real-time, helping people in charge understand the condition and position of each commodity in transit and the environment itself owing to this continuous flow of information. The technology can also help monitor damage to maintain product quality, providing assurance that goods are stored under ideal circumstances, especially perishables, thereby reducing the likelihood of stockouts and overstocks and helping to establish precise inventory management.
Achieving Total Supply Chain Visibility
While better inventory management is being accelerated through IoT, currently, there are still numerous blind spots throughout supply chains. Many organizations claim to have implemented some form of ‘visibility,’ but often, interpret this in the narrowest sense, focusing primarily on ‘track-and-trace’ and ‘shipment location’ aspects of visibility. Achieving end-to-end (E2E) visibility in the supply chain goes beyond monitoring goods in transit; it includes tracking trailers in the yard and managing appointments, leveraging IoT technology to gain real-time insights at every stage. By utilizing IoT devices to track high-value assets from manufacturing to destination, manufacturers gain actionable data that enhances operational efficiency and customer experience. This comprehensive visibility allows for optimized yard management, streamlined appointment scheduling, and condition monitoring, ensuring quality standards are maintained. Additionally, the data enables risk management and supply chain optimization, ultimately improving delivery times and reducing costs while providing customers with transparent, real-time updates on their orders.
Art of Automation
IoT can further enable automation and employ systems and robotics to perform repetitive tasks like packing, picking, and sorting with increased effectiveness and precision, than done manually, thereby decreasing the scope for errors, enabling faster order fulfillment producers and reducing the cost of manpower. In addition to this, the technology can also ensure regulatory compliance, particularly in sectors such as food and beverage and pharmaceuticals by providing detailed records of storage conditions, handling processes and product movement; eliminating the need for manual record keeping.
Though IoT is growing exponentially, India still faces a myriad of challenges that logistics and supply chain companies need to address. With IoT devices collecting stacks of data, data privacy, secure data storage, stringent access controls, and robust encryption are still concerns. Moreover, the deployment of the technology itself requires substantial upfront investment, creating a barrier for small companies or those with limited budgets.
This only accounts for the tip of the iceberg as IoT integration requires people with specialized knowledge in data analytics, networking and system integration, requiring organizations to also invest in in-house technical skills.
Nevertheless, due to the changing dynamics of markets across the globe, supply chain companies today have buckled up and improved their flexibility to modify processes based on real-time data, providing ample time for warehouse staff to efficiently react. India is now becoming key to the integration of AI and IoT at a rapid pace owing to rapid digital transformation, pro-active governance and a thriving startup ecosystem.
(The author is Mr Sriram Nagaswamy, Senior Vice President-
