Warehouse Automation Market – Growth, Trends, COVID-19 Impact, And Forecasts (2023 – 2028)
The Global Warehouse Automation Market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 12.5% during the forecast period. The increasing manufacturing complexity, technological availability, and the exponential growth of the e-commerce industry are driving the warehouse automation market over the forecast period.
New York, March 20, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Reportlinker.com announces the release of the report “Warehouse Automation Market – Growth, Trends, COVID-19 Impact, And Forecasts (2023 – 2028)” – https://www.reportlinker.com/p06431237/?utm_source=GNW
Key Highlights
Warehouse Robots have witnessed massive deployments, but amid COVID-19, a significant speed of deployment is expected. The COVID-19 pandemic has led warehouse operators to consider accelerating their timetables to adopt automation and robotics. Those who have successfully deployed also depicted the creation of safer workplaces by reducing interactions among workers by simultaneously enhancing productivity to meet increasing demands for e-commerce. The surge in e-commerce during the last several months has led thousands of brick-and-mortar stores to close businesses.
Automation in warehousing offers extreme convenience when cutting overall business costs and reducing errors in product deliveries. According to DHL, a prominent 3PL company and a significant end-user of warehouse automation solutions, 80% of warehouses “still manually operate with no supporting automation”despite the advantages. Furthermore, warehouses that use conveyors, sorters, and pick and place solutions, among other equipment (not necessarily automated), account for 15% of the entire warehouses. In contrast, only 5% of the current warehouses are automatic.
According to the Bank of America, by 2025, 45% of all manufacturing will be performed by robotic technology. Following this trend, large firms, such as Raymond Limited (an Indian textile major) and Foxconn Technology (a China-based supplier for large technology manufacturers like Samsung), have replaced (or plan to replace) 10,000 and 60,000 workers, respectively, by incorporating automated technology into their factories.
These factors have directly impacted the increasing adoption of warehouse robotics. The rising number of warehouses and increasing investments in warehouse automation, coupled with the global rise in labour costs and availability of scalable technological solutions, have been driving the market for warehouse robots worldwide. For instance, prominent logistics brands in the United States, like DHL, XPO Logistics, and NFI Logistics, are investing in expansion activities, despite the adverse commercial renting climate.
Further, companies such as IAM robotics, Grey Orange, and Bleum offer mobile robotic picking solutions that add a new efficiency level to the process. Increasing technological advancements, such as the automation of warehouse vehicles, like forklifts and pallet jacks, draw attention from companies with massive warehouses and high throughput transactions.
Similarly, Amazon’s Manchester Warehouse robotics helped the company process many incoming orders with a high-efficiency level. Advancements in sensors’ artificial intelligence and mobility enable automated robotic machines to be easily deployed virtually anywhere.
Moreover, the primary goal of each company is to increase the efficiency of the processes by using simulation. These goals have further resulted in the warehouses equaling the developments in manufacturing segments and making logistics seamless. It results in removing or mitigating any risk that can lead to creating a bottleneck situation. IoT technologies allow warehouses for real-time data transfer, flexible communication, and Big Data analytics. These and the cloud-based solution enable automated, sophisticated, and agent-based control.
Warehouse Automation Market Trends
Autonomous Mobile Robots to Have a Significant Growth
Autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) differ from AGVs by their degree of autonomy. Robotics for distribution centres (DCs), such as autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) and collaborative picking arms, are overgrowing, with well over a dozen robotics vendors aiming at the needs of DC operators.
AMRs are replacing AGVs in logistical applications. Unlike AGVs, AMRs incorporate more sophisticated onboard computers coupled to inertial measurement units (IMU), laser scanning range finders, 2D and 3D colour cameras, and motor controllers. Such AMRs do not require tracking strips to be placed in a factory or warehouse.
Further, it is expected that AMRs would gradually replace forklifts in particular too. Mobile Industrial Robots, Inc. has taken the first initiative (MiR), which has designed The MiR1000 AMR. It can tolerate a payload of 1000kg. It has six laser scanners, 3D cameras, and an artificially intelligent camera.
AMR also offers new opportunities for inventory monitoring. Combined with RFID-tagged products and equipment, these machines can now conduct their inventory sweeps autonomously at schedules determined by the warehouse.
Considering the innovation in the AMR space, the applications and the total addressable market for AMRs are likely to increase beyond retail, warehouse, and hospitality. The companies such as Amazon, Dematic, Fetch Robotics, inVia, and Robotics, have been shaping the market for AMRs and supporting the industries that are adopting them. For instance, the United Kingdom-based Iconsys expanded into autonomous mobile solutions with the launch of its iAM-R (Iconsys Autonomous Mobile Robot). It is designed to provide autonomous robotic solutions to the company’s customers.
In addition, the wider availability and declining costs of sophisticated sensors have reduced costs for the end-user. Before, only three-shift or four-shift operations with very high hourly pay rates could find justification for an automated forklift project. Now, a wider range of operations, including those with just a few trucks, can get a return on their investment.
North America is Expected to Hold Significant Share
The growth in e-commerce is the primary reason for increasing robots in warehouses and distribution centres in the United States. In addition to advancements in technology that have made robots better and smaller, lower costs and a shortage of labour in some places further help the market to grow.
Also, the major companies with many warehouses and distribution units utilize acquisition strategies to reduce labour costs and increase their profitability. For instance, until 2020, Amazon has installed more than 200,000 mobile robots that work inside its warehouse network, alongside hundreds of thousands of human workers in the United States. This robot army has helped the company fulfil its ever-increasing promises of speedy deliveries to Amazon Prime customers.
The outspread of coronavirus across the world has beneficiated the studied market as large and small companies are expanding the use of robots to maintain social distancing and reduce the number of staff that has to come to work physically. For instance, the warehouse of Amazon and Walmart has increased the use of robots for sorting, shipping, and packing, which is expected to reduce the number of complaints by warehouse workers as they cannot social distance from their colleagues under the current conditions. It is creating more opportunities for logistic automation to grow in the region.
Furthermore, the companies in the market are looking to expand their footprints in the region to cater wider customer base. For instance, in February 2022, Addverb Technologies, a provider of warehouses and factories, announced its expansion into North and South America.
In December 2021, Kroger Co. announced its plans to build an Ocado-powered automated warehouse in North Carolina to fill online orders. The Plans call for the 200,000-square-foot North Carolina CFC to operate within 24 months after ground-breaking on the site. Such instances are expected to drive the growth of warehouse automation in the North American region.
Warehouse Automation Market Competitor Analysis
The Warehouse Automation Market is highly competitive. Some key global players in this market are Dematic Group, Daifuku Co. Limited, Swisslog Holding AG, Honeywell Intelligrated, and Jungheinrich AG. Product launch, acquisition, and partnership are key strategies market players operating in the warehouse automation industry adopt. Some of the recent developments are:
October 2021 – ABB Limited’s White Paper focuses on robotics and automation in addressing the challenges and opportunities accelerated by COVID-19, such as labour shortages, omnichannel distribution, and e-commerce growth. ABB offered four critical automation solutions that increase the resiliency of logistics operations through flexible automation. Item picking, palletizing, robotic storage and retrieval systems, and sorting.
April 2021 – 3PL Central, one of the leaders in cloud-based Warehouse Management Systems (WMS), has acquired Skubana, a leading inventory management system and e-commerce operations platform. With this acquisition, 3PL Central expanded its supply chain technology offering to include intelligent order routing and inventory management to provide an integrated fulfilment solution from the shopping cart to the warehouse.
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The market estimate (ME) sheet in Excel format
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