Don’t overlook your final 100 feet.

**This article was published on: workplacepub.com. 
Article contributed by: MHI’s SLAM Industry Group

PAC Machinery VP, Greg Berguig, was interviewed in this article. 

SLAM equipment allows companies to move, label, scan and sort a variety of packages. Image courtesy of MHI’s SLAM Group.

The pandemic served as a massive accelerator of e-commerce operations. When retail stores shuttered, people turned online for their shopping needs. Even as we emerge from the pandemic, however, that genie isn’t going back in the bottle. Americans changed their shopping habits for good, and e-commerce continues to be the backbone of buying habits.

In the wake of that shift, warehouses all over the country have expanded their fulfillment centers. These new facilities represent a more highly automated operation. Companies have invested in equipment, automation and software aimed to move products quickly and efficiently from one end of the warehouse to the other. Operators use equipment like pick-to-light, conveyors, palletizers, sorters, robots and more to pull products from shelves and send them on their way.

Many companies remain behind the eight-ball when it comes to automating SLAM, which prevents them from fully optimizing their picking and fulfillment operations.

“Companies sometimes begin manually and just continue that way,” says Greg Berguig, Vice President for PAC Machinery. “They’ll pick products, put them in totes and send them onto SLAM, where they must be scanned again and then labeled by hand.”

There are many reasons behind this lack of moving toward automated SLAM operations, including oversight, desire to reduce capital investment, or seasonality of operations.

“Companies with big fluctuations in demand from one season to another sometimes hesitate to automate their SLAM operations, for fear the investment will go to waste,” Berguig explains. “Instead, they hire temporary labor during busy seasons.”