Automation in Inventory Management in MSME (Micro, Small, Medium Enterprises) Warehouse by Use of Robots

Abstract

In today’s fast-moving world, inventory is a crucial element of an organization operating on any scale. Therefore, its proper and sophisticated management is vital for the efficiency as well as the profitability of an organization. Companies need to have inventory for various reasons namely seamless manufacturing of products and timely delivery of goods as per the order. Inventory warehouses occupy an enormous space subsequently needing a whole lot of funds. This paper demonstrates the altered racking arrangement, which eliminates the intermediate space required for loading and unloading of the products and instead utilizes an overhead 3-axis robot for its accessing purpose. This ideology helped in not only squeezing the actual space required by 57% as compared to the conventional racking system but also eliminating the human errors and fatigue associated with a manual system. Moreover, this configuration allows achieving 100% accessibility of the bins. In a true sense, the role of inventory management is to have a proper track of data regarding concerned inventory thereby ensuring sufficient quantity every time to fulfill ever-changing client requirements, but at the same time overstocking should also be given the utmost attention and be avoided. This study showcases the utilization of robots to introduce automation in the warehouse, whose job is to control the actions to handle the inventory. They were programmed to introduce concepts like FIFO and KANBAN to maintain optimum inventory levels.