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58 DC VELOCITY JULY 2016 www.dcvelocity.com
(matrix) bar codes, image-based data
capture, and optical character recognition (OCR) for reading printed or
handwritten labels.
“A dark facility or warehouse is the
holy grail right now,” Ashodian said.
“People are looking to automate certain
processes, and auto ID is a crucial part
of that vision, to enable track and trace.”
BALANCING FLEXIBILITY AND
AUTOMATION
Another barrier to the wider adoption
of light-out technology is the need for
many DCs to remain flexible. Building
a fully automated facility to handle a
specific type of goods would not make
sense for e-commerce fulfillment centers that ship a wide variety of items
for online retailers or for third-party
logistics companies (3PLs) that serve a
constantly changing roster of clients.
Instead of committing to build a fully
dark facility, these types of operations
might instead create zones of automation, adding dark capabilities only for
certain material handling tasks.
“There are already dark functions
within the warehouse, such as AS/RS
and systems that move materials from
pickup spots to racks,” Ashodian said.
“Each of those is like a dark facility within a facility.”
PATHS TO FUTURE GROWTH
As warehouse operators look to expand
these islands of automation into full-
scale lights-out facilities, they are focus-
ing on three critical technologies that
act as the muscles and the brain of
automated DCs:
b Automated storage and retrieval sys-
tems. Automated storage and retriev-
al systems are “lights-out’” by design,
since their intricate patterns of con-
veyors, bins, and racks leave no room
for a human operator to get inside a
functioning machine, Cognex’s Engle
said. AS/RS installations work best in
distribution or manufacturing facilities
that handle high volumes of inventory
moving in and out of storage. Some
of these can even sort, sequence, and
buffer goods for tasks such as goods-to-
person picking, order fulfillment, and
temporary or long-term storage.
b High-speed sorting equipment.
Another warehouse tool appropriate
for lights-out processes is high-speed
sorting equipment. These machines
whisk goods and materials to differ-
ent locations in the facility. Operating
independently of human control, these
sorters usually need human help only to
tend to the placement of objects on the
inbound end or to monitor the reject
lane and other output locations, Engle
said.
b Warehouse robotics. One of the most
recent growth areas for dark warehouse
operations is robotics. Deployed for
decades in manufacturing environments such as automotive production,
they have been expanding in recent
years into a variety of logistics applications. DCs have relied on stationary
robotic palletizers and depalletizers for
some time, but recent advances in technology have allowed warehouse robots
to become mobile. Guided by wireless
instructions from a warehouse management system (WMS) or warehouse execution system (WES) and navigating by
laser-based vision systems, these robots
can ferry pallets and cases of goods
around a bustling warehouse without
human intervention.
As supply chain leaders continue to
wrestle with these challenges, it’s likely that DC operations will move only
gradually toward the ultimate ideal of
a dark warehouse. By continuing their
investment in auto ID, robotics, and
warehouse automation gear, they can
expand the dark zones that already exist
at some sites.
Even under pressure to meet rising
demands for e-commerce fulfillment
and next-day delivery, the hurdles of
building the lights-out warehouse of the
future still loom large.
“There is a lot of change in the wind,
such as the Internet of Things and new
fulfillment strategies like decentralized
structures that get product closer to the
customer,” Sick’s Ashodian said. “But
as to building the fully automated dark
facility, we’re not there … yet.”
