One-Day Shipping Now Crucial in E-commerce: Augusto Beato

With e-commerce companies on the race to accomplish one-day shipping, those that invest in the right supply chain solution will be at a competitive advantage, says Augusto Beato of Portland SEO.

"Optimizing every part of their business operations has never been so crucial for e-commerce firms," avers Beato, who is the CEO of Portland SEO. "They have to meet demands for cheaper and faster delivery from retailers coupled with increasing competition.”

Beato was reacting to Zebra's Future of Fulfillment Vision Study, a global body of research analyzing how manufacturers, transportation and logistics firms, and retailers are preparing to meet the growing needs of the on-demand economy, which revealed that 78 percent of logistics companies expect to provide same-day delivery by 2023 and 40 percent anticipate delivery within a two-hour window by 2028. It’s estimated that global shipping has tripled over the past few years, while the cost has dropped.

One example of a company investing in supply chain solutions is General Cavi, an Italian warehousing magnate that updated its warehouse fleet with the TC8000, Zebra Technologies’ future-proof touchscreen Android devices for swift, seamless transfer of devices while avoiding any downtime and lag in production. General Cavi has deployed the TC8000 in six of its warehouses to track finished goods from start to finish. Its medium range scanner is perfect for managing from incoming products, internal stock movements and inventory, all the way through to picking and dispatch.

Another is DHL's plan to invest $350 million in robotics, augmented reality, robotics process automation, IoT, and in their in-house visibility solution - MySupplyChain. Manhattan is its solution provider.

These emerging technologies will be deployed in 350 of its 430 facilities in North American facilities. Many of these new technology solutions are focused on automating the labor-intensive piece picking requirements driven by e-commerce.

DHL is using simulation to help them set the proper decision rules for when and how to drop work orders to the floor. They are simulating the productivity in both picking and packing and seeing how the bottleneck changes based on the order drop rules.

This, in turn, can allow DHL to push the cut off time for shipping back several hours and ship a greater percentage of the orders that drop on a particular day.

"Currently, two-day shipping is the norm. But e-commerce firms that can get to one-day shipping soon will be ahead of the pack," says Beato.

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