Automating using SaaS WMS

Christian Nilsson, IT and logistic manager at M3 Logistics, says the automation hardware is especially helpful for their customers having a small number of products. “With the new vertical lifts, we can more easily allocate staff to work at the machine to pick and pack orders more efficiently. We do not have to spend unnecessary time going back and forth across the warehouse.”

Offering a possibility to integrate automation hardware is a great way to let customers build up their own warehouse solutions. Ongoing Warehouse’s CEO Fredrik Einarsson means it is central to leave the choice of hardware suppliers to the customers. “We have a wide range of customers and they need to be able to develop their warehouse solutions in different directions. Some needs a high level of automation and should be able to integrate hardware from any supplier, which our automation API allows.”

Although just recently putting the storage lifts in production, they can already see improvements such as improved space utilization, shorter lead times, a tidier warehouse and better ergonomics. “All those parameters contribute to make the staff feel better.” says Christian.

The new solution will now be carefully tested in production, and if the good results seen already remains, M3 Logistics plans to increase their level of automation further. Christian means it is important to keep up with developments in order to meet the new requirements as the e-commerce business is continuing to grow.

“The trend is towards more web sales consisting of more, but smaller deliveries. This means that the warehouses must adapt how the goods are handled. There is a requirement for faster deliveries and an increase in returns, then you should have flexible systems for both deliveries and returns. One way to go is to automate.” Christian continues.

Johannes Blomquist, software developer at Ongoing Warehouse, has taken part in developing the automation API and says a key point is to make sure the API is easy to implement and scale, something Christian agrees to: “Ongoing has created a simple API to have a standard solution for implementing more machines in a simple way without major development costs.”

Learn more about our automation API here.