7 Key market trends driving demand of automation in warehousing
Automation and robotics are gaining traction amid rising demand from warehousing and logistics sector. In addition, COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the use of automation to enhance production in the times of shortage of skilled labour and social distancing measures in place. Find out about seven key prevailing trends propelling growth.
- Manufacturing sector in India is moving towards industry 4.0 at an accelerated pace owing to COVID-19 crisis. Industry 4.0 includes use of connectivity (IoT), advanced analytics (AI and ML), automation (robotics) and advanced engineering (3D printing and nanoparticles), which will increase efficiency, enable high levels of product customisation and improve speed to market.
- Warehouse automation market in India is expected to grow expand at a CAGR of ~13.38% during the 2020-2024 period, to reach a value of INR 421.5 billion by 2024, as per market report.
- FMCG & FMCD sector is fast moving towards automation solutions. The use of automation has made inventory transparent and has eliminated the possibility of a last-minute stock outage. A process that was labour-intensive and full of errors has been transformed into something that can be handled by a small number of people on a machine.
- Automated solutions such as order picking technologies (pick-to-light technology, voice technology, sortation systems, etc.), bar-coding, radio frequency identification (RFID), and automated storage and retrieval systems (ASRS) to gain momentum to drive growth in warehousing & logistics sector.
- AGV/AMR market is expected to cross $5B mark by 2026 with a CAGR of ~32%. AMR is going to be the main contributor in retail warehouses due to high demand in the e-commerce sector and its flexibility to deploy the robot without any major change in the existing warehouse infrastructure, according to market report.
- Logistics automation market size is going to expand at a rapid rate owing to the exponential growth of the e-commerce sector, developments in robotics and the emergence of the IoT and introduction of driverless cars and drones in logistics.
- E-commerce and e-retail fulfillment growth are pushing conventional warehouses and distribution centers to their limits, and automation is very critical to any operation that wants to remain competitive. Online shopping boom has brought penetration of mobile robots five years ahead of time amid the coronavirus pandemic, as per reports.