Why would they have to change anything about suppliers or shipping lanes? It’s the same products being put into the same boxes, but by machines and not human hands. 🤨
Just off the top of my head: Stockouts, exceptions, recalls, availability, change in supplier, natural disasters (or similar like the Suez canal blockage), things like cyberattacks, materials shortage or inflation might cause internal or external changes both in your direct supplier or else in the manufacturers supply chain.
Consider also some warehouses are forward stocking and you might run inventory management software to ship from warehouse A while stock is above x% and switch to warehouse B if it falls below that level (or, again, your supplier’s supplier might…)
Other products might have multiple ingress points to your supply chain and you have a dedicated buyer who makes changes based on the best price (perishables especially), others might be seasonally affected - either foodstuffs or things like sunglasses, winter coats, inflatable pools, pumpkin spice, christmas decorations… that are seasonable supply
Again: What does that have to do with robots in the warehouse packing boxes? Because there aren’t humans? There are still administrators and such. They don’t want to eliminate middle management (even though it would be easier to do that than replace the actual workforce with machines), just the laborers.
see my first reply: a packing robot can only follow directions within certain parameters and if those parameters change, a human can adapt instantly, a robot can’t.
You asked how and why it might change and I gave some examples.
The packing robot has nothing to do with the supply chain though. The machine doesn’t care if the products it packs come from one source or another as long as they are delivered to the same starting point and the packing robots are also not the ones ordering shit.
Why would they have to change anything about suppliers or shipping lanes? It’s the same products being put into the same boxes, but by machines and not human hands. 🤨
Just off the top of my head: Stockouts, exceptions, recalls, availability, change in supplier, natural disasters (or similar like the Suez canal blockage), things like cyberattacks, materials shortage or inflation might cause internal or external changes both in your direct supplier or else in the manufacturers supply chain.
Consider also some warehouses are forward stocking and you might run inventory management software to ship from warehouse A while stock is above x% and switch to warehouse B if it falls below that level (or, again, your supplier’s supplier might…)
Other products might have multiple ingress points to your supply chain and you have a dedicated buyer who makes changes based on the best price (perishables especially), others might be seasonally affected - either foodstuffs or things like sunglasses, winter coats, inflatable pools, pumpkin spice, christmas decorations… that are seasonable supply
Again: What does that have to do with robots in the warehouse packing boxes? Because there aren’t humans? There are still administrators and such. They don’t want to eliminate middle management (even though it would be easier to do that than replace the actual workforce with machines), just the laborers.
see my first reply: a packing robot can only follow directions within certain parameters and if those parameters change, a human can adapt instantly, a robot can’t.
You asked how and why it might change and I gave some examples.
The packing robot has nothing to do with the supply chain though. The machine doesn’t care if the products it packs come from one source or another as long as they are delivered to the same starting point and the packing robots are also not the ones ordering shit.