‘Digital Twins’ & ‘Industry 4.0’ to transform warehousing in India

According to the E-Handbook on Warehousing Standards, released recently by the Warehousing Association of India, ‘Digital Twins’ and ‘Industry 4.0’, can transform the future of warehousing in India and enhance logistics efficiency and cost-competitiveness. Digital twins in warehousing lets companies design, simulate, and test new warehouse operations and product movements virtually, before starting up new sites or making changes within existing sites. As technology drives innovation, the warehouse of today will transform into an increasingly digital environment in future, it stated. WMS enables consistent performance at a low cost. Change will be driven with real- time transaction processing, optimised storage, and selection strategies, directed task management, and integrated labour standards. Operational and strategic teams need to be able to make accurate decisions about ongoing situations. Real-time visibility provides actionable information that can help swiftly adapt plans, improve processes, minimize threats and maximize opportunities. With the advent of Industry 4.0, technology has aided visibility and real-time decisions. From RFID tags, IoT sensors and cloud- based management systems, the real-time supply chain has enabled greater agility and flexibility via machine learning and predictive data analysis. The advantages conferred by supply chain visibility may be individually small, but they can be applied to every movement, operation and transaction in a supply chain, thereby saving time and creating efficiencies that add up to significant savings.