Leveraging Augmented Reality for Warehouse Management

| Manufacturing

boxes in warehouse

In today’s competitive business environments, fast and seamless warehouse operations are more important than ever. To stay ahead of the curve, logistics companies worldwide are investing in emerging technologies and tools to streamline their warehouse workflows and boost supply chain efficiency—and none of these show more promise than augmented reality (AR). AR technology melds computer-generated assets with real-world warehouse environments, empowering staff with valuable insights that help to mitigate costs and optimize supply chain operations.

For almost a decade, Scandit has been leveraging barcodes, objects, text and other visual assets to help businesses augment the physical world with essential digital information. Our advanced mobile data capture software enables standard smart devices to function as enterprise-grade barcode scanners, granting logistics companies access to powerful scanning solutions for order picking, product tracking and more. That’s why leading enterprises across the globe rely on our solutions for warehouse management to optimize their daily workflows. In this blog, we’ll be touching on how your organization can leverage augmented reality to improve its warehouse management system and position itself for long-term success.

How AR Supports Warehouse Management

A warehouse management system (WMS) is essentially a collection of processes and software used to control and administer warehouse operations, ranging from picking processes to inventory management. Warehouse management systems can vary drastically from company to company as well. For example, some organizations use a stand-alone WMS, while others incorporate their WMS into a greater enterprise resource planning system (ERP). But regardless of their unique complexities or capabilities, every WMS serves the same end: optimizing your warehouse operations.

Augmented reality supports warehouse management by bolstering the speed and accuracy of various data capture processes. Smart device-based barcode scanning solutions featuring AR technology enable warehouse managers and staff to easily locate and keep tabs on products and parcels, simplifying and improving workflows in the process. More efficient WMS operations also play an important role in mitigating backorders and errors, resulting in higher customer satisfaction. To give you a better understanding of how your team can use this exciting technology to refine its warehouse efforts, let’s touch on a few important WMS processes that AR can support.

Augmented Reality for Order Picking

Order picking plays a key role in ensuring that consumers receive the right items in the correct quantities. For most logistics companies, this process is a time-consuming hassle of scanning hundreds of barcodes (one at a time) to locate items and fulfill orders. But all that changes with mobile computer vision featuring augmented reality. When warehouse staff use barcode scanning software-equipped smart devices (such as smartphones or wearables) that feature AR, they can quickly identify and collect the correct items, fostering faster and more accurate warehouse picking.

With Scandit’s Barcode Scanner SDK software, you can turn even the most basic smart device into an enterprise-grade barcode scanner. Thanks to the SDK’s MatrixScan feature, users of any camera-equipped device can scan full shelves of products to effortlessly find, track and decode several barcodes at once with a single tap on their device. AR feedback generates overlays right on the smart device screen that show the locations of specific items. This enables warehouse staff to fulfill orders in a matter of seconds. Not only do Scandit-powered smart devices deliver the same scanning performance as conventional dedicated scanners, but they also decrease total cost of ownership by up to 500%, enabling more cost-efficient order picking operations. Most importantly, because most people already use smartphone apps in their daily lives, Scandit solutions require almost no training or adoption time—delivering faster, more reliable results immediately for your enterprise.

Augmented Reality for Inventory Management

One of the most important (and challenging) aspects of warehouse management is ensuring efficient stocktaking. Manual inventory management systems are too slow and prone to errors for large enterprises, which is why many leading logistics companies invest in dedicated barcodes scanning devices. And while these tools do improve stocktaking processes and limit errors, they offer limited flexibility and generate substantial hardware costs over time. Fortunately, with smart-device based barcode scanning solutions featuring AR, your enterprise can optimize its stocktaking workflows.

Scandit’s SDK software can be rapidly deployed across your workforce through smart devices and a mobile inventory management application, empowering warehouse staff with an adaptable, easy-to-use scanning solution. With MatrixScan, your team can process multiple barcodes at once, lending speed and accuracy to your inventory control and stocktaking efforts. Our Inventory Management Solution can significantly decrease TCO compared to traditional scanners and can be seamlessly integrated with existing PIM, ERP and WMS systems, mitigating costs and optimizing the efficiency of your supply chain.

Perfect Your Warehouse Management With Scandit

Ready to learn more about how your enterprise can use Scandit mobile computer vision to improve its internal business processes? Then don’t hesitate to call or message us today. Our team can offer the expertise and insights you need to understand how AR can help you improve warehouse management processes and find the right solution for your unique needs. You can also contact us for more information about augmented reality and how it can be used to optimize your logistics operations. We looking forward to hearing from you.