UPS will not add a residential delivery surcharge this holiday peak season, unlike the past two years, but will add surcharges for larger packages and those requiring additional handling. The company expects to exceed record volume of 800 million packages set last year, with 75% of it handled by automated sortation systems.
In an effort to reduce its massive distribution and fulfillment costs, Amazon is implementing packaging automation, much as many other retailers have, while a separate program offers up to $10,000 to help set up Amazon employees willing to flip to delivery contractors.
By 2025 there will be more than 4 million warehouse robots in use at 50,000 locations globally, up from 5,000 locations in 2018, according to a report from ABI Research, with much of the growth coming from ecommerce fulfillment including demand for same-day delivery. See what experts have to say about the growing trend.
Amazon may have raised the customer expectations bar, but the pressure has been kept up as merchants scramble to meet increased fulfillment demands. So how do you react and execute? Our MCM Outlook 2019 report gathers survey results and expert insights to help you focus your investments to compete and win.
The Feb. 5 fire that completely gutted an automated Ocado grocery fulfillment center in the UK was caused by a failure in an “ambient grid” storing food at room temperature, raising concerns about what happens in these types of facilities when disaster strikes, according to a Bloomberg report.
Where do you go to learn what solutions and strategies others in ecommerce and omnichannel have successfully implemented? Ecommerce Operations Summit 2019, April 9-11 in Columbus, OH, is totally geared to all things DTC. It’s the perfect venue to validate your approach, save on costs and improve the customer experience.
As you consider your packing supply requirements, you need to look beyond just buying boxes and dunnage. The larger issues of dimensional weight, increased labor costs, brand perception and environmental impact are important, too. These 7 recommendations will help as you review your packing and shipping processes.
Warehouses, distribution centers and fulfillment centers need to hire an additional 226,000 workers each in 2018 and 2019 just to keep pace with demand, driven largely by perpetually booming ecommerce, according to a new report from commercial real estate firm CBRE.
As Amazon gets stronger and competition rises, you need to continually find ways to reduce expenses and improve the customer experience. Drawn from hundreds of operations blogs we have written for Multichannel Merchant, here are 13 ways to make your fulfillment operations more efficient and improve performance.
inVia Robotics claims to be the first to market with a “goods-to-box” system that uses a pay-as-you-pick service model to make it scalable and affordable. See how this approach has benefited ink and toner cartridge maker LD Products, one of the first users of the system.