Computer Vision for Efficient Inventory Management
Do you know that recent research has shown that typical warehouses relying on manual procedures for counting inventory and entering the resultant data into their ERP systems take 6 hours on an average to complete one such cycle and that too with 80% efficiency? Did you also know that physically counting merchandise in large retail stores can take long hours and also can lead to temporary closure of operations?!
As per data published in 2020 by a leading market research firm, retailers worldwide have realized losses of $580 million and manufacturers have realized losses amounting to $680 million owing to improper inventory management practices. The same research has also shown that retailers can incur losses of up to $1 trillion, owing to low shelf-availability of products. Industry research has shown that a 1% increase in sales in retail and manufacturing settings can be realized by a 2% and a 3% increase in on-shelf availability respectively.
Having real-time inventory visibility and obtaining real-time updates on accurate inventory counts is crucial for organizations for smoothly running their businesses and succeeding in a competitive environment. Many organizations in the retail, warehousing, distribution, and manufacturing spaces tend to invest a significant amount of time, workforce, and resources into manually counting their inventory. Manually counting stock levels for each SKU not only leads to a lack of real-time visibility of inventory levels, but also leads to vast amounts of time and effort being devoted into only counting inventory and determining whether any SKU is to be replenished or whether inventory is missing or whether bottlenecks exist in the production process.
A case study published in the Journal of Economics and Finance has shown that companies can realize a 36% increase in their profits by increasing the transparency and efficiency of their inventory management practices. Although inventory management hardware and software such as barcode scanners, hand-held terminals and RFID scanners have reduced manual time and effort to a certain extent, advanced analytics solution based on AI and computer-vision possess tremendous potential in augmenting the efficiencies of inventory management by ensuring automatic inventory counting and generating alerts based on business logic. These solutions can greatly reduce manual workarounds and provide real-time visibility of stock levels too.
Are you wondering how such solutions work or how they can be applicable to your business process? That’s where Thoucentric steps in!
Find out how we can help you by downloading our whitepaper.
