Weighing System Options For The Warehousing And Logistics Sector With The Increase In Ecommerce And Online Shopping
According to Infrastructure Australia, transport and logistics is estimated to contribute about 15 per cent of Australia’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Our geographic size, combined with a commodity export driven economy, mean that our nation’s economic competitiveness is strongly tied to the quality and effectiveness of our supply chain infrastructure and function.
The policy and economic focus around Australia’s transport and logistics sector and infrastructure network routinely focuses on commodities and exports. However, ecommerce and the movement of retail goods is forming a significant component of the national freight task.
The transport logistics and economics associated with the dispatch and delivery of large volumes of online purchases from and to multiple collection and delivery points presents a completely different challenge to the relatively simple movement of bulk commodities from point to point.
However, the core principles of efficiency, safety, regulatory compliance and accurate data transfer are still critical. And with Australia’s ecommerce market expected to grow to an estimated $22 billion by the end of 2022, it will become increasingly important.
The sector is, by its nature, primed for innovation and technological solutions. However, while drones, autonomous vehicles and robots might form a significant part of the future of retail ecommerce delivery, the reality is that the bulk of the sector currently relies on traditional processes of warehousing, logistics management, packaging and despatch using traditional methods of transport, particularly road transport in trucks.
One of the biggest challenges facing the sector is managing the flow of data across numerous product movements. For example, a single item might arrive in a bulk shipment in Australia by aeroplane or container ship, be transported to a domestic warehouse, be transported by forklift internally, require repackaging before it is addressed and forwarded to a courier or postal delivery service for final delivery to a customer.
Each of these steps is likely to require accurate weighing and/or dimensioning, with the data collected and required to be communicated between the various stages of transport, warehousing and delivery. The likely requirement for manual handling of goods adds an additional safety compliance element to the challenge.
Creating an efficient, profitable and compliant ecommerce transport service requires a sophisticated, expert and experienced approach to process design which ensures that the necessary data and information is readily available at all stages in the process. It requires a wide range of weighing and dimensioning solutions to be implemented. These can include shipping and bench scales, conveyor scales, floor scales, forklift scales, volume dimension assessment solutions and a wide range of accessories and information management solutions to integrate the flow of data.
Ecommerce is here to stay but making it work profitably for you requires expert and experienced advice when it comes to weighing and measuring solutions. Trakblaze is Australia’s leading provider of tailored, sophisticated weighing and measuring systems.