Arthur Hanson
Well-known member
Given the advances coming in highly automated warehouses, they are set to replace a significant part of the retail industry thanks to increasing shrink and inherent inefficiencies in the current retail/warehouse infrastructure. The massive efficiencies to be gained by fully automated warehouses in energy, land use, labor is far too large to be held back. Advancing semis and ever lower cost to handle everything from picking objects, inventory and ordering with very limited labor and utility costs combined with sharply lowered land cost due to purpose-built structures like the cube warehouses. Semis handling everything from robotics to increased efficiency in ordering is about to change how the entire economy is handled. The efficiencies at every step will be too large to be ignored, especially with the vastly increased cost of shrink or security measures to cut shrink down. AI/ML applied to material handling at all stages from ordering, handling and dispersing goods is going to change our social/business structure in ways most haven't even imagined.