You’re Never Too Small To Automate
When you hear the word “automation” your mind might automatically jump to massive warehouses filled with intricate conveyor systems and robotic arms quickly completing their tasks 24 hours a day 7 days a week. While that may have been the case a decade ago, automation technology has come a long way since then. It’s no longer only worth it for large-scale operations, it is viable for every business type and in fact could be a make-or-break factor that lets a smaller, scrappier enterprise go toe-to-toe with big industry players. Automation comes with many benefits, all of which contribute to smaller businesses ramping up productivity, boosting throughput and ultimately claiming a larger chunk of the profits to-be-had in highly competitive industries like e-commerce.
At CCS, we’ve been providing businesses and of all sizes with automation solutions for over 40 years and we can confidently say that automation is becoming more and more essential for smaller-scale operations in the modern material handling landscape. Here are four reasons we think it’s essential that smaller businesses leverage automation in their supply chains.
Automation Can Help Ease the Pains of Labor Shortages
To this day, supply chains across the country are currently experiencing labor shortages. By investing in technology such as robotics, automated storage and retrieval systems (ASRS) and Automated guided vehicles (AGV), they are also attracting new, fresh tech-savvy talent. Automation allows repetitive tasks to be performed at a higher efficiency. Collaborative Robots can be trained to train the worker who is going to be working with them. This also means temporary workers can be effective and efficient in a shorter amount of time.
Automation Solutions Are Flexible And Can Change With You
Automation in itself is constantly adapting as industries adjust to for supply and demand changes in the global economy. As such, it’s becoming more and more agile and opportunities to integrate some common automation applications like Automated Sortation or Robotic solutions are coming to be seen in varying business applications. Much in the same way, an automation solution installed to perform one task may very well be capable of fulfilling another task as demands change, helping increase the long-term value of that particular solution.
Automation Will Help You Grow
Unfortunately, there is a widely held assumption that automation for some reason only ever replaces human laborers in the supply chain. This is quite simply not the case in many of the industries most heavily affected by the growth of automation. Because automation solutions boost throughput and efficiency, businesses subsequently enjoy a boost to growth and opportunity because they are more equipped to meet growing demands. This growth in turn does the exact opposite of the common misconception and instead of replacing workers, it drives businesses to expand and hire more – both for supply chain laborers and in other parts of their business as well. Most simply put, automation solutions aren’t about replacing human labor, but rather shifting the focus of human labor from menial tasks like sorting or picking to skilled tasks like operating or maintaining robotics, increasing that worker’s value in the labor force.
Automation Will Help You Stay Competitive
At the end of the day, smaller-sized enterprises need to find creative solutions that help them stay ahead of rapidly shifting market demands while benefiting from less resources and room for error than their larger, more established competitors. Automation solutions increase efficiency, cut costs and expand your throughput all at once. Whether you’re a young, upstart company eager to take a bite out of a new industry, a mid-sized, established operation trying to elbow your way up a market’s influence chain, or anything in between, automated solutions could very well be the key to your ongoing success.
Carter Is Here To Help
Carter Intralogistics has many automation solutions available to help businesses of all sizes. Our consultative approach means that we will work you through every phase of your automation solution’s project — from planning and design to manufacture and install — to ensure you get a solution that is right for you.
Start a conversation with Carter by contacting us via our website. Or, feel free to reach out directly to sales@carterintralogistics.com and we'll get back to you as soon as possible.
