Advertisement Krishnan Sundaresan, Director at ARRYVE Robots, in the not-too-distant future, will evolve from an advanced technology to a critical component of infrastructure, akin to the ERP systems that form the information backbone of most distributors today. Your competition is evaluating robots, and you should be, too. But success won’t come from simply keeping up; distribution leaders of the future will go beyond to step up, stand out, and secure a competitive advantage. Creating a unifying vision to integrate robots into your organization is the first step towards that competitive advantage. Companies that focus their attention narrowly on tasks that can be automated today will miss out on seeing around the edges and harness the power of robots. Traditional process levers such as lean and value stream analysis have already enhanced the loading, putaway, and retrieval activities in most distributor’s warehouses. The next frontier will emerge from robots. With this frontier in sight, robots can’t be considered the future of distribution. They are the present; and distributors that don’t plan on integrating robots with a holistic perspective will be left in the past. Building Blocks of a Unifying Vision A unifying vision builds on this holistic perspective to understand the impacts, opportunities, and essentials of transforming the distribution operation into robotic reality, and it comes down to three basic principles. Watch: Amazon Robots In Action Principle One: Make it Matter The vision for robots needs to be integrated into the fabric of the organization; robots can’t be seen as the next passing fad or simply a cost reduction mechanism. Clearly articulating distribution’s goals is imperative to orienting the organization to the future, and providing direction and guidelines for the tactical decisions of the business functions. Robots should be considered as a value enabler in the annual strategic planning process, […]