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Articles by Andy Lockhart
Why Integrated Robotics are Essential to High-Performance Warehouses
For material handling veterans, it feels like only yesterday when robotic systems achieved widespread, mainstream adoption in warehouses and distribution centers. Today, a wide array of solutions, from increasingly flexible and fast pickers to palletizing and depalletizing systems and automated mobile robots, are proven to deliver exceptional reliability, throughput and order accuracy.
Employing Automation to Tackle Warehouse Labor Shortages
Here are five ways manufacturers can implement automation to solve warehouse labor shortage issues. Automation's fundamental role has always involved augmenting labor by using technology for tasks that are less desirable, dangerous or difficult for people to complete repeatedly. Over time, automation evolved as advancements enabled machines to do more. Innovation was always the name of the game.
Reflections on 2025 and Thoughts on the Year to Come
With the passing of one year and the start of another, now is the perfect time to reflect on the issues that shaped materials handling operations in 2025 and assess what may lie ahead. Read also: Where Supply Chain Leaders are turning Volatility into Opportunity For supply chain leaders, including those in the general merchandise, apparel and food and grocery sectors, 2025 was a year marked by contradictions.
Is Your Fulfillment Process as Optimized as It Could be?
You’ve done everything right. Amid the virtually limitless choices available online today, the customer chose your e-commerce site to order from. Everything that led to that decision – the convenience and heritage of your brick-and-mortar stores, the expertise and customer service of your sales associates, the authenticity of your brand, the accuracy of your pricing strategies – it all led to this moment, the completion of a transaction.
Preparing for Peak Season Pressures
Peak season is the time of year when retailers see their revenues surge, making it the focal point of their annual operations. While efforts to spread out consumer demand have reduced the focus on Black Friday and Cyber Monday, the holiday shopping rush remains a pivotal make-or-break event for fulfillment operations and the brands they support. Today, peak season is a period when it's critical for retailers to deliver on their customer promise.
Warehouse Automation: Reflections on the Past Year and Predictions for the Year Ahead
Supply chain leaders at U.S. retail and e-commerce companies operating globally are adept at transformative change. Many navigated the pandemic’s disruptions and adapted to the demands of today’s true omnichannel consumer. They also witnessed a dramatic acceleration in innovation, alongside the rapid adoption of automation and robotics solutions that seemed unimaginable just a few years ago.
Strategic planning and smart investments: Unlocking the potential of automation
We are in the golden age of warehouse automation. Supply chain leaders today have a dizzying array of new automated solutions to choose from. These include autonomous mobile robots (AMRs), automated storage and retrieval systems (AS/RS), automated case-handling mobile robots, robotic pickers, and advanced software.
Fulfillment operations in uncertain times
On the surface, it may seem like e-commerce and store-level fulfillment are relatively straightforward. However, sophisticated fulfillment operations enable retailers to quickly adapt to a litany of constantly evolving factors, including rapidly changing and often instantaneous throughput requirements to keep pace with promotion or holiday demands.
Creating the Business Case for Warehouse Automation
The warehouses and distribution centers that play a central role within supply chain operations today have never been more valued. Operational teams are realizing that to keep manufacturing running smoothly and make sure retail orders are delivered accurately and on time, the right materials handling talent, equipment, and facilities are required.
Hedging Consumer Behavior Bets in Warehouse Planning
Baseball icon Yogi Berra is often credited with saying, “It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.” This is particularly true for the warehouse operations at the core of e-commerce, omnichannel and store fulfillment. The longstanding acceptance that change is a constant has taken on a new meaning in retail, and across the consumer goods, fashion and food sectors in recent years.
Warehousing for In-Store and Online Grocery Fulfillment
Online grocery sales are powered by a complex interplay of digital commerce, brick and mortar and warehouse operations with a growing number of fulfillment options to support customer preferences. These include the nearly ubiquitous buy-online-and-pickup-in-store (BOPIS), buy-online-and delivery-to-home (via the retailer’s operation or a third-party), or buy-online-and-ship-to-home – something typically done by a parcel carrier.
30% of IT Leaders Feel Less in Control
Struggling to manage complex cloud environments? Any-to-any cloud platforms simplify security and connectivity, driving growth and innovation. Leaders struggle to steer their organizations through complexity while delivering innovation and growth in today’s rapidly evolving business landscape.
Facilitating Innovation and Growth in your Business by Embracing the ‘Any-to-Any’ Cloud Revolution in Your Infrastructure
By: Andy Lockhart, VP EMEA Cloudflare. In today’s rapidly evolving business landscape, leaders face the challenge of steering their organisations through complexity while delivering innovation and growth. A recent commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of Cloudflare, revealed a striking insight: 30% of top IT decision-makers across Europe are grappling with a sense of diminishing control over their organisations’ technological and security frameworks.
Optimizing Warehouse Automation: Understanding Key Considerations
Understanding how AS/RS and AMR solutions differ from one another is the first step to not only determine which one is best for your organization’s warehouse, but also where their joint use can optimize workstreams and throughput. By Andy Lockhart, director of strategic engagement, warehouse solutions, North America, at Vanderlande Consumers’ affinity for online shopping appears to have finally reached an equilibrium where e-commerce growth is in line with expectations.
Choosing Warehouse Sorting Systems for the Future
Few things are as synonymous with warehouses in the retail and e-commerce sectors as the sorters and conveyors that move the right products to the right location with speed and accuracy. Perhaps more than any other warehouse systems, sorters are also among the most time-tested and multi-faceted solutions in use today.
How have digital mobility platforms responded to COVID-19 and why does this matter for ‘the urban’?
Introduction Digital mobility platforms are increasingly pervasive across different urban contexts. Diverse examples organised around ride-hailing, bike-sharing, journey-planning, payment and ticketing – among others – have emerged both in competition with and offering complementary services to existing urban transport networks.
AS/RS: The Era of Shuttles is Here
Elevated e-commerce sales are here to stay. Even in the face of consumers’ affinity for in-person shopping and problematic macro-economic trends, online sales remain robust when compared with pre-pandemic levels. In its report on second quarter 2022 e-commerce sales, the Department of Commerce estimated that online purchases comprised nearly 14% of retail sales, or $252.1 billion, a 7.4% increase from the same period last year.
How To Expand Global Operations Securely.
In 2022, we continue to live with the effects of the COVID pandemic and the new short- and long-term challenges and opportunities it brings to enterprises large and small. On top of that, the Ukrainian crisis has dealt a further set of complexities and considerations. The multiple new ways that people work and communicate seem to be here to stay, resulting in an impact on where and how people go online and the expectations they have for accessibility and speed.
Making space for drones: The contested reregulation of airspace in Tanzania and Rwanda
Abstract In contrast to their use in warfare and surveillance, there is growing interest in the potential of “drones for good” to deliver societal benefits, for example by delivering medical products and other essential goods. Yet development of medical and commercial delivery has been limited globally by restrictive regulation to protect airspace safety and security.
Office app for Android - How to access the public preview
Please click here and follow the on screen instructions to join the preview group and get the app. Troubleshooting tips: To join the preview group and get the app, sign-in is required as per Google Play Store policies. If you're having trouble joining the group with the link above, you can...
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