Global logistics firm Maersk has deployed drones from autonomous indoor drone developer Verity to improve its warehouse inventory management processes.
According to Maersk, warehouse inventory management is a key aspect to successful supply chain flow, financial cost management and business decision-making.
It can also be a difficult and repetitive task to consistently carry out in warehouses, which can lead to data inaccuracies and the requirement of staff to work at varying heights.
“As a supply chain integrator, we are constantly looking for new innovations and engineering solutions in our warehouse operations,” said Erez Agmoni, senior VP of innovation and strategic growth for Maersk North America.
“We wanted to deploy a safer, more accurate, data-driven inventory solution that addressed our decarbonisation goals for customers and prevented our workforce from working at heights. Verity’s system has delivered data accuracy, safety and speed which makes our warehouse management system stronger, faster and more effective for customer decision-making. We view the Verity solution as an important differentiator to make our customers more competitive through higher quality, faster inventory data.”
Verity’s warehouse drones are designed to navigate from pallet to pallet and collect inventory data in three dimensions by scanning barcodes with their onboard high-resolution cameras.
The drone developer claims its system requires just one day of operator training and that its electric powered drones autonomously return to the battery charging point when necessary, meaning they can operate on nights or weekends and without overhead lighting turned on.
The drones work by taking photos of SKUs on pallets to detect inventory errors, such as missing or misplaced pallets. Once the data is collected, the system compares the findings with data stored in the warehouse management system (WMS) and creates insights that are delivered to users via the user dashboard.
What’s more, results storage is cloud-based and shareable, meaning it can provide actionable warehouse data that offers improved analytics for supply chain leaders, according to Maersk.
