The warehousing landscape in India is experiencing an evolution driven by globalization, urbanization, and the booming $80 billion e-commerce market. The integration of smart technology solutions is reshaping traditional warehouses, turning them into highly efficient, technology-driven facilities. Additionally, wearable technologies are revolutionizing the warehouse industry, granting workers instant access to crucial information, optimizing workflows, and elevating overall productivity.
The Indian warehousing sector is growing rapidly, while the government is trying to reduce logistics costs. To achieve this, digital transformation is essential. The crucial process of digitalization involves adopting cutting-edge solutions that comprise both hardware and software. This will include printers, mobile devices, radio frequency identification (RFID) technology and advanced software, among others, to enable greater operational efficiency and accuracy.
Wearables in Action
Wearable barcode technology has been around since around 2010, and it was originally created to provide a hands-free option for heavy and bulky lifting. The concept helped to improve work efficiencies while lowering the repetitive motions of picking up and putting down handheld scanners. As technology improves, so do the capabilities of wearables. Gone are the days of being tethered to a terminal. Wearable devices have also improved from being bulky and incapable of holding to being ergonomic, Wi-Fi capable, and battery-powered. It is also imperative that wearables are powered by a familiar operating system (OS) like Android to reduce training time required. This allows businesses to achieve high productivity levels within the shortest possible time after introducing the technology.
Optimizing the mobile ecosystem
While handheld mobile devices can help to improve the speed and accuracy of warehouse workflows, they do not provide a hands-free experience for the workers. Freeing up the workers’ hands will improve their productivity significantly as they are now able to pick up or move items without having to constantly put away their mobile devices or even risk misplacing them. This would be applicable in the case of operating heavy machinery like forklifts, which will require them to have “both hands on the wheel” for safety reasons.
Future of wearables
The significance of rugged wearable devices in the warehousing sector in India is underscored by the promising trajectory of the future of wearable technology. Warehouses face substantial pressure to embrace digitalization, enhance agility, boost productivity, and prioritize safety. Various types of rugged wearables like wrist scanners, characterized by a comfortable ergonomic design, revolutionize warehousing operations by providing hands-free functionalities. Ring scanners, equipped to scan both barcodes and RFID tags, offer hands-free mobility, suitable for operation in diverse weather conditions. Head-mounted displays play a pivotal role in augmenting task efficiency and accuracy by overlaying contextual information onto workers’ real-time field of view, introducing augmented reality functionality to warehouse applications.
In a fast-paced industry like the warehousing sector, it is crucial that technology serves as an empowering force rather than an impediment to success. The complexity of tools should not necessitate resource-intensive training, which could hinder contributions and potentially lead to high turnover. As the industry propels forward, the integration of wearable technology emerges as a transformative force, promising to redefine how warehouses operate and empower their workforce for sustained success.
(This article is authored by Subramaniam Thiruppathi, Country Lead for India and Sub-Continent, Zebra Technologies Asia Pacific)
