New Guide Reviews How Case Picking and Palletizing is Changing and What It Means for Retail Distribution

Improving efficiency has become critical for retailers seeking to maintain margins in the face of changing distribution requirements. E-commerce hasn’t just created the need for direct-to-customer fulfillment but, along with other retail trends, has changed the amount of inventory retailers are keeping on store shelves and the frequency with which those shelves are restocked. 

At the same time, recruiting and retaining labor remains a persistent challenge at the distribution center and store level and case handling is one of the most physically demanding tasks in each location. Building pallets manually for retail store fulfillment is inefficient and results in pallets that increase workloads across the retail network as workers have to break down pallets and reorganize cases based on store layouts. 

That has resulted in more retail distribution centers considering automating case picking and palletizing using the new generation of intelligent solutions now available. The new guide, Making the Case for Store- and Aisle-Friendly Fulfillment, is a collaboration between Swisslog and Modern Materials Handling that takes a deeper dive into this trend and explores the capabilities and use cases for robotic case picking and palletizing. To access the new guide, visit our reference section here.