Optimization with Automation

FORTNA’s Niall Prendiville and Jordan Mitchell spoke with Logistics Business Magazine at LogiMAT to discuss the challenges warehouses are facing and how automation or a software solution can ease labor challenges and optimize operations.

Below are several excerpts from the article, Optimisation with Automation, Logistics Business Magazine | May 2024.¹

Niall Prendiville
Vice President, Product Management

“The customer is used to technology being pushed upon them, but we’re less about trying to sell technology,” says Prendiville. “We have the understanding of how the warehouse operates, so we spend time with the customer, listen to them to really understand the problem, and then develop an integrated solution behind that. We can come in and support them with the broader aspect. What is your order profile, what is your SKU affinity mix, being able to understand that end-to-end workflow… Sure, we can tell them that we can implement that one point solution, but we will ultimately come up with a supply chain transformation that we support. We’ve become an advisor, even after the point solution installation.”

Jordan Mitchell
Senior Director, Software Product Management

“In the past, automation has been a lot about finding ways to replace a human because costs were going up,” says Mitchell. “But in the last year and a half or so, we have started to see more of how do I combine my human resources with my automated resources, and allow them to work in concert together? Finding a way to orchestrate the tasks to assign them appropriately either to a human or a robot. Optimizing that work across the human and the automated interfaces has been the big change lately, because there are times where you have humans that are available and meet your pay rates, and there are times that you don’t have enough people. You have to combine the two to work together, and make sure that the change management’s there as well.”

¹ https://flickread.com/edition/html/6641ce1731c2e#38