St. Onge Company’s Howard Turner was quoted in a recent Logistics Management article about e-commerce. Howard was asked how new developments in artificial intelligence and machine learning are affecting the modern warehouse management system. Use the link below to read the article!
WMS vendors are looking for ways to inject AI and machine learning (ML) into their platforms. Although, Howard Turner, director of supply chain systems at St. Onge Co., says that we’re still in the early stages of this trend.
“For now, at least, AI and ML usage in WMS seems to be somewhat theoretical and showing up on product roadmaps,” says Turner. “I’m not aware of any actual applications yet, but we do hear vendors talking about future capabilities in these areas.”
When those visions do become reality, e-commerce companies will be perfect candidates to start taking advantage of those extended WMS capabilities. Generative AI (Gen AI) will also come into focus at that point by helping to optimize facility layouts and more accurately predict demand. This intelligent automation can also help businesses to make more informed, data-driven decisions in the fast-paced e-commerce fulfillment world.
Turner says that AI and ML can also help companies sift quickly through their data overload and make better sense of the information that many of them are drowning in. Where a WMS dashboard may show how many trucks and pallets are arriving or leaving the DC on a specific day, for example, AI can do its part by answering questions like “how many orders do we need to process on this shift” and “how ahead or behind are we right now in meeting that goal?”
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