In 2020, the U.S. supply chain experienced significant disruption, particularly during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic. The impact was sizable, with shortages of paper goods, food items such as meat, and certain cleaning supplies and other essentials. At the same time, national and state-wide lockdown mandates led to the temporary (and in some unfortunate cases – permanent) shuttering of many physical-location retailers. Virus fears caused shoppers to head online to order food, medicine, and other goods, leading to an unprecedented boom to eCommerce.

As warehouse and distribution center operations continue to grow in both size and complexity, many businesses are scrambling to invest in automated solutions that enable them to keep pace with the demands of global e-commerce and customer expectations.

Moving a physical conference to a virtual experience is no small feat, especially when layering on the challenges posed by today’s remote work and changing employee roles. Like many businesses this year, our Customer Conference, Prevail 2020, has shifted virtually as we seized the moment to bring a traditionally in-person extravaganza online for the first time. After months of planning, our event is almost upon us. As we head into the big week, I want to share some thoughts on how to begin, plan, and execute a virtual conference today.

Automation represents the future of warehouse operations. With these best practices in your automation planning, you can achieve operational gains that directly impact your organization’s bottom-line and allow you to forge stronger connections with partners on both sides of the supply chain.

To gauge whether a deployment is successful, establish KPIs to measure how the business, the customer, and downstream suppliers are affected. Ideally, the KPIs you identify should quantify outcomes and demonstrate that none of the three stakeholders (business, customer, and downstream suppliers) experiences a negative impact.

5G is the fifth generation in mobile networks and enables connections between machines, objects and devices that are faster and more powerful than previous networks. 5G has a low latency, drastically reducing response times and offers higher capacities in terms of bandwidth. The technology allows users to communicate more information or data at once, and in a quicker amount of time.

In these times, operating a smart warehouse is as essential for business continuity as is having a secure work from home (WFH) environment for employees. Even as disruptive events continue to unfold – to which coming generations will surely analyze and discuss - it’s evident that not being digital in an increasing digital world could prove disadvantageous for businesses functioning without modern technology.