Unveiling the Future of the Supply Chain: Key Insights from Modex 2024

What We Learned at MODEX 2024

By Keith Moore - CEO of AutoScheduler.AI

MODEX 2024 reported a record attendance of 48,733 supply chain and manufacturing professionals and over 1200 exhibitors. According to Modern Materials Handling magazine, this was the largest MODEX event to date, with 32% more registered visitors than MODEX 2022.

What we heard:

• The labor/turnover issue is still significant, and everyone is discussing it. It is hard to keep employees because there is so much demand for warehouse staff. Some executives were saying that there is a 50% turnover in warehouses. Why? Because these are lower-paid jobs, workers hop from job to job to take advantage of even a 50-cent raise.

How AutoScheduler can help: We help capture tribal knowledge by collecting information across the enterprise. This tribal knowledge is available even if there is a turnover. Leveraging tribal knowledge within the supply chain complements formal risk management processes. It gives organizations a more comprehensive understanding of the complexities and nuances inherent in supply chain operations, ultimately enhancing their ability to anticipate, mitigate, and respond to risks effectively.

• WMS projects are taking extra time to implement due to integration issues with so many disparate projects and automation. Many WMSs are so customized that the integration causes many problems and delays.

AutoScheduler Advantage: Without making any changes to your WMS or newly installed automation, we can look at your current state and still make major improvements on how things are orchestrated and executed. Whether home-grown or through a larger provider, we act as a bolt-on to your current WMS. Our highly robust platform requires minimal investment of time and resources to implement while generating maximum value.

• Many shippers are increasing their service level requirements in the supply chain to meet evolving customer expectations and competitive pressures. This makes it more challenging for suppliers to meet delivery goals.

AutoScheduler Take: With AutoScheduler, shippers can optimize their supply chains to meet demand efficiently. We create constraint-based schedules that can reduce the number of moves between warehouses, cross-dock more frequently, and improve inventory shelf life. AutoScheduler looks for future orders to know what is needed, helping to improve on-time and in-full fulfillment.

At MODEX, AutoScheduler discussed how the AI and machine-learning-enabled platform orchestrates resources within distribution centers and warehouses to meet on-time, in-full requirements. AutoScheduler acts as the brain of the warehouse, sitting on top of a WMS to orchestrate and optimize all activities in real-time. It takes data from ERP and other systems and uses capacity-constrained schedules to create plans and schedules that optimize the warehouse.

AutoScheduler also discussed its soon-to-be-introduced Centralized Distribution Orchestration (CDO). Many companies have multiple facilities, each with its own WMS. CDO provides network-wide distribution visibility across each facility in a centralized, moment-of-truth screen, allowing managers to know what is happening across the network and prioritize at-risk sites as needed.