New era of warehouse in Thailand industry 4.0 "What are the impacts of automation warehouse in Thailand?"

Abstract

In order to enhance the efficiency of logistic system in the era of Thailand industry 4.0, many companies are interested in implementing automated systems into their warehouses. However, a careful exercise in balancing risks with rewards needs to be conducted in order to determine whether automation system would compliment their warehouse operation. This research therefore studies on the impacts of automation warehouse in Thailand to deeply understand its benefits and drawbacks. Moreover, this research also explores the possible challenges or issues that companies encountered during implementing automation warehouse. The qualitative research method is used for collecting data from the selected samples. The interviews were conducted with seven respondents who work for different positions and come from different companies which already implemented automation system into their warehouses. Interviewed results were categorized into groups and compared with the findings from literature review. Research findings indicate that there are a variety of benefits from implementing automation warehouse such as higher space efficiency, increased speed, reduced energy consumption, reduced product damage, reduced labor cost, lowered injury risk, increased inventory accuracy, etc. Meanwhile, the drawbacks are high upfront cost, less flexibility, worker disengagement, high maintenance cost and costly breakdown, required new skills and expertise, etc.