How Inventory Drones Help Warehouses Find and Fix Inventory Errors

Introduction

When we started the company, we spoke with hundreds of warehouse operators to understand the challenges they were facing. Operators have told us how high warehouse occupancy (epitomized by Prologis who reports that in Q1 2023 their occupancy rate is 98% and tenant space utilization is 85%) and demand from consumers who want same-day delivery have made inventory accuracy extremely important. However, high inventory accuracy was costly and difficult to achieve, especially with the currently high labor turnover rate of 70%, and teams told us that they didn’t have all of the information they needed to accurately manage their warehouse. Therefore, we developed our solution to help bring real-time visibility to the warehouse.

Today, many warehouse inventory teams do manual cycle counting as a way to maintain high inventory accuracy. The challenge with cycle counting is that it is labor-intensive, low-value add, and doesn’t offer the ICQA manager or the warehouse manager visibility into what’s actually in the warehouse. The Gather AI drone inventory management solution helps warehouses improve their inventory accuracy, in one case over 70% while reducing the cost, improving warehouse productivity, and boosting revenue.

Using warehouse drones backed by advanced, intelligent software, we can help warehouse inventory teams quickly and easily find and fix inventory errors, helping them to achieve accurate inventory counts, save time and money, significantly reduce lost inventory, and enable them to reallocate MHE and employees to more value-added work .

How do we help our customers fix and fix any inventory errors? With our solution:

Drones take pictures of pallets in a warehouse
Our advanced machine learning algorithms compare what the drones saw with what’s in the Warehouse Management System
Our dashboard shows the results and highlights inventory exceptions

With the information our solution provides, inventory teams proactively fix inventory errors, rather than reacting when something is missing.

Read below to learn more about how our solution works and to see it in action at one of our customer’s warehouses.

How the Gather AI solution scans inventory

Gather AI’s drone inventory management solution uses warehouse drones to scan inventory 15x faster than traditional means. Our drones fly autonomously through the warehouse, taking pictures of pallet locations using high-resolution cameras. Our advanced machine learning algorithms then analyze these pictures, comparing barcodes and text with what's currently in the WMS.

Improve inventory accuracy

Our customers use our dashboard to find and fix inventory errors. When our solution finds inventory in a location that does not match the data stored in the WMS, we flag it as an exception and display it on the dashboard.

From the exception list on the dashboard, inventory teams dive deeper to understand and fix the exception:

They click on each item and view a picture of the location where the exception was identified, along with details about what the drone saw versus what’s in the WMS
They look at the picture and verify that the exception is correct
They quickly modify their WMS to accurately reflect what’s actually in the pallet

Now when pickers arrive at pallet locations to find items, they are sent to the correct location and can easily fill the order.

Find missing inventory

But what if an item is missing and the team doesn't know where it is in the warehouse? Our drone inventory management solution can help. Teams no longer need to have inventory fire drills, running through the warehouse trying to find lost items. Using our dashboard, they can locate missing inventory by searching for a specific License Plate Number (LPN). Our system shows the last location where our drones saw that LPN, making it easy to locate the missing item quickly. Once the lost item has been located, pickers can quickly pull the item they need.

If they still can’t find it, inventory teams can create flight missions and use drones to scan the aisles where they believe the missing pallet is stored.

Drones scan 900 bins per hour - making accurate inventory possible

What makes this all possible? Our warehouse drones for inventory management improve inventory data because of the speed and accuracy with which we can scan your inventory. Our drone inventory management system uses three drones and one operator to scan 900 bins per hour, far exceeding what a human could accomplish. In fact, our system is so efficient that one customer was able to scan their entire warehouse in just 2.5 days versus the 90 days before using our solution and another customer found over $1 Million in inventory in one year.

Using drone inventory management not only helps teams locate lost inventory more quickly, but it also reduces the risk of inventory inaccuracies, mis-shipments, shrinkage, and manufacturing lines going down. By catching errors and inconsistencies early, teams can take action to correct them before they cause bigger problems down the line.

How one customer uses Gather AI to find and fix inventory errors

Want to see how our warehouse drone solution works in a warehouse? In this video, Jesus Barrientos, ICQA Manager at Barrett Distribution, discusses how his team uses our solution in their warehouse.

Conclusion

Our customers have seen how warehouse drones for inventory management can have a significant impact and improve warehouse operations. By leveraging advanced technology like machine learning and optical character recognition, we can help you quickly and easily find and fix inventory inaccuracies and, locate lost inventory. Improving inventory accuracy has helped our customers improve warehouse productivity, decrease the cost of inventory accuracy, and boost revenue.