How RFID-enabled visibility is helping warehouses navigate through labor shortages

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Studies show that rising demands in warehouses will be changing the landscape of supply chains over the next five years. And furthermore, according to a recent Zebra Study, 60% of Warehouse Leaders expect labor recruitment to be a major challenge over the next five years.

In the face of increased demands and a shortage of workers, one of the most important new challenges to overcome is improving asset visibility across supply chains. Enhancing visibility is significant because it provides your warehouse team with intelligent information that helps your business make informed decisions to improve efficiency and productivity.

RFID Solutions for Warehouse application RFD40Implementing RFID technology built to withstand tough warehouse conditions will modernize your warehouse with maximized visibility that optimizes inventory management, picking, and cross-docking. In fact, 77% of respondents agree they need to modernize their warehouse operations but admit they are slow to implement new technology to do so. To remain competitive, today’s warehouses must find the balance between simplistic visibility and warehouse optimization.

Choose higher visibility to create a more flexible and optimized warehouse

Order pickers have been estimated to spend 70-75% of their time traveling from location to location picking inventory for orders. With that understanding in mind, imagine how wasteful it is when inventory is inaccurate or has gone missing. Investing in RFID automated solutions that can improve inventory accuracy to near 100% can double or even triple productivity by eliminating downtime spent traveling for inventory picking.

Maintaining a high level of inventory accuracy is even more difficult during a labor shortage. That’s why warehouses are leveraging automated RFID-systems to maintain efficient operations and empower their smaller workforce with better information.

A2B Tracking is a certified Zebra Advanced RFID Specialist. Our partnership with Zebra allows us to provide cutting edge technology to help organizations digitize their operations to improve speed, productivity and accuracy – even during a labor shortage.

The A2B Tracking RFID software platform provides a secure, cloud-based asset management solution to achieve 99% inventory accuracy or better using advanced barcode and RFID. The key components to the A2B Tracking RFID platform include:

RFID Solutions fixed readersMobile RFID inventories – Transform your warehouse with mobile RFID asset tracking to perform fast and accurate physical inventories. Choose Zebra’s RFD8500 or RFD40 handheld RFID readers to scan hundreds of asset tags per second and update inventory systems instantly. Equip your warehouse workers with fast RFID tag capture to perform cycle counts, commission assets, check-in and check-out or locate specific items that have gone missing.

Fixed RFID reading – Revolutionize your supply chain with hands-free automation to capture items as they move throughout your facility. Fixed RFID gateways automatically improve inventory accuracy by tracking assets as they move throughout your facility. Eliminate human error by routing your assets through a fixed RFID gateway to automatically update location information without interrupting your normal business processes. Have instant visibility into the time and direction that an asset moves through a gateway indicating the new updated location.

Autonomous Mobile Robots – Autonomous Mobile Robots (or AMRs) that have RFID capabilities are designed to move steadily and precisely throughout your warehouse to provide continuous cycle counting and inventory tracking. This automated data collection system is a game-changer for organizations that want to perform inventory counts and checks multiple times a day. AMRs will scan all RFID tags with a location, date and time stamp and record that data in the A2B Tracking asset management platform. These frequent cycle counts create a robust audit history that is accessible to everyone in the organization. Automated mobile inventories can free people from cycle counting and allow them to focus on more high-level work. RFID immediately improves inventory tracking, increases accuracy, and saves time.

A2B Tracking RFID Solutions

A2B Tracking integrates RFID solutions to improve visibility and accountability for all types of assets. We can customize a solution for your organization that includes mobile and fixed RFID technologies to help you achieve total asset visibility. We can also provide AMRs to provide automated mobile inventories to support your warehouse team with continuous cycle counts to maintain extremely high inventory accuracy levels.

Implementing automation like RFID technology into your warehouse helps improve productivity even when your business is short on workers. Learn more about the RFID solutions from A2B Tracking to start streamlining your inventory management today.