Warehouse Drones – Equipment of the (Near?) Future

Are there warehouse drones in your future? The answer is probably yes. Hollywood is already using them to film from brand new angles. Farmers are saying that the drone will transform their industry by more efficiently surveying their land and allowing for improved crop management. Online retailers, such as Amazon, are anxious to fully embrace the new technology because it dramatically improves service. “If you order a t-shirt, instead of waiting two or three days, you’ll get it in two or three hours,” says Bill McClellan, vice president of government affairs at the Electronic Retailing Association. Warehouse drones can potentially revolutionize the delivery process – and companies of all descriptions, from grocery stores to flower shops, might just have their own company drone a few years down the road.

But will there be a drone flying about in your company’s warehouse in ten years? The answer will depend upon a bunch of variables, including the outcomes to present day experimentation in the industry. Let’s take a brief glance at how new technologies might affect the warehouse of the future.

At present, laws prevent the full scale use of warehouse drones in industry. However, their application is entirely legal inside the warehouse itself. Because a rectangular warehouse is a finite field, it is amenable to scanning and mapping for automated drone usage. At present, automated drones are being utilized in pilot projects at warehouses, for the time intensive, mundane job of assessing inventory. “A task that can take hours or days, and a lot of labor by a human item checker can be made much more efficient by an automated drone programmed to read RFID tags,” says Joe Dunlap, a managing director heading up the supply chain services division at CBRE, a large commercial services real estate firm.

During the final day of eyefortransport’s 3PL Summit and Chief Supply Chain Officer Summit in Chicago, Ken Piro spoke about how his company, PINC Solutions , has moved from providing a typical yard management system (utilizing RFID for real time location of yard assets) to the use of drones for its longtime client, Daimler. Daimler’s finished vehicles were packed so tightly in their large yards that it was impossible to read the vehicles RFID tags packed in the middle. The drone became an ideal solution.  This technology makes it easy to reach and read the vehicle IDs, even those in the middle lanes. PINC understands that, because drones access places in the warehouse that regular workers can’t, automating can deliver a tremendous payback to businesses.

What You Can Always Count on in Warehouse Equipment

What about your business? Even if drones are not something in the offing for your company right now, having a competitive edge always matters. At Culver Equipment, we deliver solutions to help you maximize efficiency, increase production and ensure the safety of your employees in the warehouse.  We thrive on innovating and developing customized solutions for your needs. Whether it’s optimizing your layout or creating a one of a kind component, we have the expertise to get the job done. Our team of experienced installers strive to deliver projects on time, and under budget. We promise great service.  Ready to consider some ideas for innovating in your business?  We can help.

Contact us for your new or used warehouse equipment, call us at 480-855-0088 or reach us by email at sales@www.culvereq.com