In keeping up with the times and the way warehouses are being managed currently the trend shows that India will leap from shoulder loading to robotic palletized warehouses directly. In spite of the economic slow down the cost of manpower refused to decrease. Increase in cost of living has been a major factor in the increase in the cost of manpower. Currently 60% of the logistics cost is of manpower and if this cost grows by 20% every year we are staring at a 12% increase in the input costs. Even if the costs are higher availability of skilled manpower who are dedicated to work is getting scarce every day. Each Indian is an entrepreneur by birth, at some point of his life they chose or admire to live on his OWN, Even if that means doing farming back in the village. This spirit of being can not be bought and makes the skilled work force even scarce, which is good for the nation, concern for the industry.

Implementation of GST will have an impact on the planning, size and location of warehouses. Industry experts feel that consolidation of warehouses will lead to implementation of technology and automation processes. Wherein size of warehouses will become bigger and consolidate to lesser locations, the throughputs will also increase. We will need more and more people at the same locations to complete the task within the timelines. Cascading inventory will vanish and prompt deliveries will take their place. Order to delivery time cycle will further shorten and accuracy needs to improve. More energy needs to be spent on the batch control and reverse logistics process. Any rejection and reverse flow of goods will have a bad impact on performance and involve multiple cost approvals due to long distance of the distribution centers. As the consumer is moving towards virtual markets, smaller sized order and multiple SKU loads will increase. Sales distribution will demand greater flexibility in load building and dispatch. Far distance distribution hubs will be put under bigger spotlight to dispatch accurately and meet the shrinking timelines.

However all this pressure will result in better turnarounds and more throughputs for the warehouse where in feasibility to invest time and money will be fast with far reaching results. Currently the HPT and pallets are difficult to justify their cost for x number of inventory, with 4x inventory they surely not only justify but also be in dispensable. Plastic pallets and robotic warehouses are not just the vision of future but a close reality now. With seamless integration of sales and warehouse the times are about to change drastically. It is true that the leap from a godown to warehouse was sudden and so will be the warehouse to a ASRS center. These high-density warehouses will not only solve the purpose of space and land but also be able to give much more work in same time. The working of a 12 hours shift of a man can be done in 3 hours, which means we can do 4 times work in same time without break, even at non working hours. By the time people report to work the warehouse will be ready with all the picking done and ready to take commands for the day. Just because our delivery points cannot take palletized deliveries we will handle the cargo between trucks and Dock by hand.

The investment to switch to an advanced system is the same of the efficiency, which is wasted, in the current system. – TIME