Comments on: How IKEA Uses Drones for Inventory Management

By: Christoph Roser

Christoph Roser — Tue, 20 Dec 2022 11:12:43 +0000

Hi Emily, I don’t know of any other company yet. Maybe ask the vendors if they have other clients?

By: Emily Pires

Emily Pires — Wed, 30 Nov 2022 01:26:36 +0000

This is a very interesting post on the use of drones at IKEA for inventory management. Drones started by taking pictures of inventory in Bangkok, Thailand and has improved since then. I think its great there was a positive reaction from employees. Most employees found taking inventory unpleasant and dangerous, they are now happy to have it automated. I like the way IKEA used there freed-up manpower to improve inventory in other areas where drones were not suited. Do you know if any other companies that use drones for inventory control?

By: Christoph Roser

Christoph Roser — Tue, 29 Nov 2022 11:11:52 +0000

Hi Macy, i don’t have any statistics. Ikea says its inventory errors went (almost) to zero. The drone vendor of course makes bigger claims, but these are hard to verify and may be optimistic.

By: Macy Andersen

Macy Andersen — Tue, 29 Nov 2022 01:53:32 +0000

Do you know how much this new drone system has boosted productivity or work efficiency at IKEA? Need statistics

By: Andrey Abutin

Andrey Abutin — Sun, 14 Aug 2022 17:47:19 +0000

Cycle counting is when the actual inventory on hand is physically counted to square it off vs what the system thinks is on hand.

At AutoZone, where I work at, we cycle count car batteries every week along with a couple other high ticket item areas. All in all, AZ inventory processes are grossly outdated wrt to the fact that it’s not 1985 anymore where even smaller satellite stores had a minimum of eight people working even on slow days. We receive deliveries on pallets, while the manifest is sent electronically. There’s NO process in place to receive in individual items. Stuff gets put away, and then the entire shipment gets marked as received to add in the quantities in the manifest to the store inventory. And yes, we often wonder if the distribution center is staffed with idiots who are either high weed or simply don’t care about putting in correct quantities.

A slight variation of cycle counting is the inventory matrix. That’s when we go with a handheld scanner and scan all of the tags where the item is sold out to verify that the system knows it’s out (since that data is used to determine what we’ll be sent on the next truck).

By: Christoph Roser

Christoph Roser — Fri, 29 Jul 2022 09:42:40 +0000

Mike: Interesting. What do you mean by cycle counting? But it is amazing to see more drone usages pop up than I expected.

By: Mike Demos

Mike Demos — Mon, 25 Jul 2022 19:22:40 +0000

Great article on the application of drones. In the OpExChange in South Carolina, one of our automotive manufacturers provided a demonstration this year of how they are using drones for cycle counting. The payback is quick just from the reduction of cycle counting labor. It took about 15 minutes to scan an entire warehouse aisle. There are less direct (and potentially higher) savings associated with more accurate inventory and safety (no forklifts or pickers needed).

By: B. Jayaraman

B. Jayaraman — Wed, 20 Jul 2022 16:58:14 +0000

Interesting reading of actual deployment of drones in Inventory Management.
For cost benefits, apart from the savings from manpower release, the hidden costs of lost sales in cases where system shows higher quantity than that which is physically available, or parts that are not traceable also need to be reckoned.
Having more accurate information on Inventory could also facilitate more efficient replenishment actions based on real-time inventory data.