With growing labour availability issues, how can grocery logistics operations significantly boost performance? Vincent Jacquemart, CEO at French autonomous mobile robot designer and manufacturer iFollow, offers a solution.
Faced with the likelihood of long term staff shortages and resulting rises in pay rates, warehouse and distribution centre operators in grocery and many other sectors are turning sometimes belatedly to automation. This is certainly an option but not all solutions deliver really significant productivity improvements.
Labour shortages in logistics have been building for some years, by no means just because of Brexit, and the inability to fulfil orders reliably is becoming an existential threat for many firms.
Logistics UK in October claimed that “13 percent of traders are reporting severe warehouse staff shortages”; in November the Cold Chain Federation noted “10 percent to 20 percent shortage rates” among its members. [Read more…] about Opinion: How to double up grocery logistics productivity with autonomous mobile robots