Whether you’re an omni-channel retailer of general merchandise, a 100% e-commerce seller of apparel and accessories, or a grocer replenishing stores, if you’re filling orders manually, you’re probably thinking about automation. The near-constant disruptive whiplash of the past few years demands unprecedented levels of agility and resilience from retailers — levels that conventional and manual processes simply cannot achieve. The following five reasons explain why your organization should automate your fulfillment operations.

Warehouse and distribution center (DC) operations considering automation do so for a variety of reasons. But there are a handful of objectives that consistently rise to the top when considering automated solutions. Learn more about the top three goals organizations set out to achieve with warehouse automation.

Automation technology is continuously advancing and entering the market as solutions providers unveil new innovations to help facilities increase efficiency. That proliferation of solutions, however, can make it challenging for operations just starting their automation journey to match the optimal technologies to specific warehousing and fulfillment process needs.

With picking widely recognized as the most labor intensive—and costly—process in a conventional, manual facility, deploying an automated solution can make a significant impact on both. In particular, goods-to-person (G2P) automation offers numerous advantages to those operations.

Once a distribution center’s (DC) or fulfillment operation’s automated system is in place, it’s in the best interest of facility managers, owners, and operators to keep it running reliably and at peak performance. That ensures both maximum productivity and return on investment (ROI). In order to achieve optimal uptime, however, it’s important to understand the operation’s expectations and plan the automation’s maintenance and service program accordingly.

For companies looking to automate their warehousing, distribution, or fulfillment operations, one of the first decisions to make is about the building. Will automation be added into an existing operation? Or does new greenfield construction make more sense? Regardless of the ultimate choice, it’s critical to work through a comprehensive internal planning process.