Potential of Streamlining Warehouse Processes and IT integration to Increase Implementation of Automation

Warehouses are located all around the world, and they are getting bigger and handle more and more material every day. This has increased the need to implement automation in warehouses. To be able to implement automation beneficially, at multiple warehouses with multiple customers owned by the same company, the processes, and the IT systems at the warehouses need to be streamlined and standardized. For this purpose, we suggest modeling an explicit architecture of the warehouses, and study which possible impact to reach from applying the architecture to standardize processes, IT systems, and in the end increase the implementation of automatization solutions. A case study of a logistics company with multiple warehouses around the world shows a big financial and growth potential to implement such an architecture. Based on previous implementations of product architecture the estimated potential of financial savings is up to 400.000 euros for a medium-large size warehouse. Streamlined processes agreed between the different departments and the implementation of similar automation will enable the company to share data and automation parts between the different warehouses.