Same-day delivery is no longer a distant dream for e-tailing businesses; it is increasingly the quintessential future requirement of the online retail model. But for this to happen, logistics and warehousing companies will need to provide that extra fillip to e-tailers. In an exclusive conversation with Indiaretailing, Samay Kohli, co-founder & CEO, Grey Orange, a warehousing solution providing company, holds forth on challenges and opportunities of the same-day-delivery promise.
Q. Do you see same-day-delivery becoming inextricable for the logistics business and specially in case of e-commerce?
Well, same-day-delivery is about bringing the online e-commerce experience as close to the offline process as possible. It is about grabbing the customers in the era of short attention spans and making the most of it.
So, indeed same-day-delivery is something e-commerce will aspire for and the logistics business will have to become efficient enough to be able to answer that need. Such a service is not possible until the large number of warehouse processes are automated and aligned with each other. It will be an outcome of a conscious effort to adopt automation.
Q. How with your expertise help the logistics companies/e-tailers in making same day delivery?
E-tailers are looking at minimising the time lag between when the customer places the order and when the delivery reaches him. Our entire R&D is currently focussed to streamline the order fulfillment process. Our intention is to take a product-based approach so that the lessons from each of our projects can be incorporated into every other project that we deliver. The artificial intelligence of our robots ensures that they adopt to order demand patterns.
Q. What are the unique challenges that the logistics industry is facing in this new consumer landscape in India?
Well, first, the logistics industry is India is very slow in adopting robotics. This has to do with their reluctance to change. If you look at our existing installations, which, by the way, form 90 per cent of the entire warehouse automation in India, the companies are registering a complete ROI within a year. Players in the logistics industry need to see the huge disadvantage they are putting themselves in, by being risk-averse. This column should contribute to creating that change in attitude, and bring them into confidence.
Q. What will be the future of e-commerce logistics ten years down the lane? What kind of innovation can we expect to see?
E-commerce logistics need end-to-end automation. The industry will look forward to unmanned warehouses which can be regulated and managed using a software. In 10 years time, we look forward to making it a reality, with fully integrated hardware and software solutions.
Q. Please tell us about the modus operandi of Grey Orange.
GreyOrange is a venture capital-backed, technology company that is concentrating on using engineering methods for solving the world’s warehousing and distribution problems. The company’s rigorous R&D is currently focused on solving operational inefficiencies and manpower issues at warehouses and distribution centres. It takes a product-based approach and assembles a customised solution using its products to each clients.
We started off with the intent to answer the warehousing automation requirements. The problem with the existing options is that they follow the way an automobile automation would work. There was no product based approach, which meant that even though most of the problems could be addressed by a well developed product (with at least 70-80% products defined beforehand), the warehousing industry was not getting that advantage. That became the starting point for Grey Orange’s current product line.
Q. Please tell us about your product portfolio and services in detail.
1. Profiler – High speed dynamic dimension and weighing system: Grey Orange’s Profiler is a high speed dynamic dimension and weighing system. It captures real volume, box volume, dimensions and dead weight of the parcels. The system reduces operational inefficiencies and helps in reconciliation of payments on the basis of volumetric weight captured.
2. Sorter – High-speed sortation system for package profiling and routing: The sorter at its heart is a mechanical system which is used to segregate items based on a certain pre-defined logic. It’s commonly used by logistics and e-commerce companies in order to “sort” their incredible influx of shipments. The current generation of our Sorter has a capacity of sorting up to 3,600 packets and 7,200 packets/hour. It can be integrated with a profiler as well.
3. Butler – Disruptive Robotic Storage & Retreival System: Grey Orange’s Butler is based on the disruptive material handling methodology of “Goods to Man”. Butlers are robots that move around warehouses like intelligent fork lifts, moving shelves stacked with various products to a floor assistant, who then scans a bar code to confirm the right items. Butlers help a worker pick 500 items/hr per personin contrast to 40 – 80 items/hr by the existing manual process.
Q. Please tell us about the innovation you are bringing to warehouse automation.
A retailer’s or rather an e-tailer’s timeline includes three broad processes: Order Receipt, Order Processing and then Transportation.
Logistics forms a crucial component of the time spent in Order Processing. Our automation systems are handling upto 70,000 shipments per day. This involves reducing dependence on manual labour, automating a number of tasks
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