The warehouses, established for three leading global consumer brands, bring together innovative startup technologies and smart capabilities customized to optimize operations and best serve customer needs. The company adds the smart warehouses feature advanced automation, such as state-of-the-art robotics; autonomous vehicles and drones; sensors and automatic identification tools; and wearable technology, like smart glasses and ring scanners.
Ryder says it has identified the technology below as definitive benchmarks of an effective smart warehouse:
- Robotics– The implementation of robotics throughout a Ryder-managed warehouse produced a 25 percent increase in productivity and 20 percent operating savings by reducing travel time in the warehouse, which can account for 30 percent of an employee’s shift.
- Drones – At a Ryder customer warehouse, drones scan pallets and locations in 20 minutes, compared with a manual scan which took 90 minutes. Additionally, a cycle count on the entire warehouse took three hours versus two days. The drone also can identify available pallet locations and verify product placement.
- Sensors– Identification tools provide real-time asset location and enable performance management. When implemented throughout a Ryder facility, productivity and cost savings increased more than 25 percent.
- Wearables– When Ryder deployed smart glasses at a customer warehouse to improve picking processes, the time it took to pick and scan inventory decreased by five to seven seconds per item and improved efficiency by 33 percent.
“We are evaluating advanced technology and automation solutions that require minimum investment but deliver maximum return,” says Steve Sensing, Ryder president, global supply chain solutions. “We focus on technologies that are mobile, flexible and scalable so they can flex with changing demands. As Ryder customers continue to face increasing omni-channel fulfillment demands, rising consumer expectations and a nationwide warehouse labor shortage, we will continue to innovate and automate the parts of the process that make sense.”
Ryder says it has partnered with several innovative start-ups like Fetch Robotics to provide the technologies that bring to life what was once considered the warehouse-of-the-future.
“Ryder, with its established network and broad bench of diverse customers, is the ideal partner for Fetch Robotics to implement our advanced robotics platform,” says Melonee Wise, Fetch Robotics CEO. “Together, our companies can provide autonomous mobile robot solutions to serve both warehouse employees and Ryder’s customers, ultimately making supply chain and logistics safer and more efficient. Our top priority is to help our customers achieve on-demand automation with a fast, flexible and scalable cloud-based platform that minimizes strenuous manual labor and streamlines inventory processes. We’re seeing this come to life successfully through the smart warehouses Ryder has developed.”
