How Does Robotic Automation Affect Supply Chain?

When running a successful business, it is important to understand what processes will set your company apart from the rest. When you decide to automate manual processes that typically take up a lot of time and effort from your employees, these robotic automation processes can free up your workforce and allow your team to focus on other projects. Having robotic process automations (RPA) can ultimately save your business time and money while simultaneously improving the effectiveness of these processes.

Streamlined Warehouse Management

Implementing robotic automation into your supply chain can help streamline your processes and ultimately reduce human error in inventory reports. Robotic process automation (RPA) can integrate seamlessly with your current software like warehouse management systems, giving your company benefits in areas such as picking, scanning, and inventory. Having automation for these parts of your company can help your employees to pick items quicker, digitize paper based manual processes, and decrease common human error.

Automated Data Entry

Entering data correctly and accurately can help you have a better understanding of your company’s needs and what your inventory levels look like so that you can plan ahead.  However, when entering data manually such as customer and order information, this can take up a significant amount of time, losing focus on tasks that require more attention. Robotic automation for data entry can reduce the need for physical paperwork, manual labor, and can store repeat order data, customer information, and can offer various time-saving features.

Easier Supply and Demand Planning

Before automation, supply and demand planning was a tedious process. Gathering necessary data previously required combining data and putting it in a presentable format, analyzing the data, and communicating the plan. Having robotic automation in your supply chain helps to improve machine learning and AI and can allow your business to predict demands. When having accurate supply and demand planning, your company can easily help customers and order necessary parts for production without going over your budget.

Inventory Management Automation

Having good inventory management allows your business to be fully aware of inventory levels to ensure your business has enough product and components to meet the demands of your customer. Robotic automation can provide technical programs that make it easier to keep tabs on your inventory levels, notify managers when stock levels are low, and automatically reorder necessary products when needed.

Implementing a robotic automation process into your supply chain can be a difficult but beneficial transition for your business. As a reputable 3PL, our team at NewStream understands the importance of adjusting your supply chain to better fit your business needs. With over 30 years of comprehensive supply chain management, we are equipped with the proper technology to help automate your processes so that you can focus on the bigger picture and love your supply chain!

Ready to automate your processes? Let’s collaborate, our team is ready to help!