Once again, it’s time to say good-bye to the old year and move on. But before we start 2012, let’s look back on some issues we covered in 2011.
The world we live in is full of intralogistics. With this blog, we are offering readers the opportunity, too look behind the closed doors of warehouses and distribution centres to uncover what lies hidden there. Granted, the matter may be quite complex. But we’re trying our best to shed some light on those aspects crucial to intralogistics.
Most of the time, we focus on the subject of efficiency. We use efficiency to evaluate how economic a certain solution or product works. It means that we are looking at the results in relation to the employed resources. To make this concept less abstract, we like to use specific examples in our articles.
A-Frame order picking, which can be done at about 5 cent per item picked, is a great example. Not surprisingly, this blog post was well received by our readers, because it is important to know the operating costs of intralogistics solutions. The report about 1,000 picks per hour basically takes the same line, although the topic is sometimes controversial. Obviously, several producers would like to advertise by claiming such a picking performance, but not everyone really achieves it.
When we talk about efficiency, we need to consider the particular situation of the company we’re looking at. A solution that might be a perfect fit for one company, could be completely useless for another one. We demonstrated this by presenting two entirely different warehousing solutions: chaotic storage and computer-optimised fixed location storage (locator storage system).
But there’s even more to say about efficiency, because the most efficient solution doesn’t just fall out of the sky. Instead, we have to look for it. Again and again. Those companies that mastered the process of continuous improvement will often be one decisive step ahead of the competition.
This however, is easier said than done, otherwise every company would work efficiently and any discussion about this would be futile. But this is never going to happen, which means that blog posts such as the one about 7 ways to efficient intralogistics are worth reading.
The article on the 80/20 rule also belongs in this category because it provides clues on where to look for potential improvements in a company’s intralogistics. A bit more direct, but with the same intention, we asked “How wasteful is your intralogistics?”. In both cases, it was about finding and exploiting options to increase the efficiency of a company.
New technologies will always play an important part here. They are offering opportunities to work in a more economic way. Sometimes it’s a new technology, such as the autonomous transport vehicle SSI Autocruiser, in other cases it’s an advancement, acting like a rejuvenation for existing solutions.
As you can see, intralogistics is an exciting world that never stops turning. We are therefore looking forward to 2012 and hope that you will continue to read this blog. Comments and suggestions are very welcome, of course. Just use the comment section below or send an e-mail to torsten.reichardt@ssi-schaefer.de.
A big „thank you“ to our readers and a healthy and successful year 2012 !!
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