Addressing Common Warehousing Challenges Efficiently and Effectively
Nokia’s Autonomous Inventory Monitoring Service (AIMS) provides businesses with a cost-effective, efficient, and precise method for inventory monitoring by deploying intelligent autonomous drones. By providing in-depth, real-time inventory analytics, AIMS minimizes the need for time-consuming manual labor, significantly enhancing productivity and operational efficiency.
With Nokia AIMS, customers can boost their overall efficiency – expecting a remarkable 30-40 percent return on investment (ROI) – by addressing some of the typical inventory challenges that warehouses often face.
Some of these challenges include:
Accuracy: Discrepancies between physical inventory and recorded data can lead to inaccuracies.
Costs: Stockouts can adversely affect revenues, profitability, and customer satisfaction.
Time-Consuming: Ongoing cycle counts are necessary to address inventory discrepancies.
Labor-Intensive: These challenges often necessitate labor-intensive internal or externally mandated audit-driven inventory counts.
A Reliable, Accurate Inventory Solution
Nokia AIMS offers a single, reliable source of information, combining technologies like computer vision-based localization, barcode scanning, full autonomy, and multi-drone orchestration. This integrated solution streamlines warehouse management, providing real-time data and insights to optimize inventory processes, all while reducing the need for costly and error-prone human interventions. With an anticipated 30-40 percent return on investment over 3 years, this innovative solution offers diverse pathways to value tailored to your specific operational challenges.
Some of the ways that Nokia AIMS can transform inventory management, depending on current practices, include:
Meticulous Inventory Counts
Nokia AIMS offers significant advantages through its innovative inventory counting capability if your business relies on labor-intensive inventory management processes. This feature reduces management overheads, minimizes worker injuries, enhances operational efficiency, and improves inventory accuracy.
With this new capability, warehouse operators can deploy autonomous drones to accurately and efficiently count individual items, such as eaches, cases, or cartons, in any racked inventory location. This enhancement complements Nokia AIMS’ existing features, which include locating misplaced inventory and detecting empty bins. If a human worker can count inventory from the aisle, the Nokia AIMS drone can do it too. The system then compares these counts with the warehouse’s existing WMS or ERP systems to identify discrepancies.
Nokia AIMS ensures that every inventory location is checked frequently, providing customers with a more accurate, reliable, and comprehensive view of their inventory.
Additionally, a Nokia AIMS drone can perform cycle counts approximately 7-10 times faster than human workers, covering around 300 inventory locations per hour. This efficiency delivers immediate value upon launch and offers customers a potential 40% or greater ROI.
Autonomous Drone Operation
AIMS smart drones operate completely autonomously and require no human intervention. Once scheduled, each drone takes off, navigates through your warehouse, and performs inventory scanning tasks entirely independently.
Infrequent Counting and Staff Shortages
Alternatively, suppose you’re looking to cut costs by minimizing counting frequency. In that case, Nokia AIMS can help by eliminating double inventory purchases, requiring fewer investigation costs, and minimizing loss due to human error and inaccuracies.
Incorporating Nokia AIMS into a comprehensive inventory management strategy allows businesses to adapt and derive value that aligns with their unique needs and challenges.
Precise Scanning and Cycle-Counting
Utilizing state-of-the-art computer vision-based scanning technology, AIMS drones excel at identifying and accurately recording the location of every item in your inventory. They’re also skilled at detecting empty bins.
Cutting-Edge Localization Technology
AIMS drones don’t rely on GPS. Instead, they use a proprietary advanced computer vision-based localization technology initially developed by Nokia Bell Labs researchers. This technology incorporates a blend of cameras, sensors, and machine-learning algorithms to enable drones to pinpoint their exact position and orientation within your warehouse environment.
Daily Inventory Analytics and Snapshots
AIMS offers daily inventory snapshots through an intuitive graphical user interface accessible from anywhere. This interface empowers users to identify misplaced items, locate empty bins, retrieve missing inventory, and review historical data effortlessly.
Seamless System Integration
In the near future (anticipated for 2024), Nokia AIMS will offer system integration via Application Program Interfaces (APIs). This means drone data feeds can directly connect with your preferred applications or Warehouse Management Systems (WMS). This integration will aid in keeping your stock levels up to date and identifying potential inventory mismatches.
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