If there’s one trend that will be hot in 2022, it’s a growing need for automated solutions in the logistics industry. There are several reasons why: labor challenges, unprecedented e-commerce demand, plus significant advances in the technologies that drive robotic solutions.

Distribution centers (DCs) have to deal with several growing challenges, all at the same time. There are hundreds of thousands of unfilled jobs within warehouses right now. The most current statistics indicate that the warehouse industry now employs over 50 percent more workers than it did five years ago. And 13.6 percent of that growth was in the last year alone. But it’s still not enough. The warehouse and transportation industries had a record 490,000 openings in July.

Every automation technology that a DC utilizes helps to offset these challenges. The idea isn’t to replace workers. But if you can move an employee from an injury-prone job like unloading pallets to doing quality checks, picking orders, sorting inventory, delivering completed orders, and so on, you can use the workers you have more efficiently to increase fulfillment accuracy and get customers their orders faster.

Listen to the full podcast to discover what other strategies and technologies can help DCs to combat the challenges they are currently facing.

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