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Scale and energise your retail strategy with a digital backbone that unifies your team, informs priorities and drives results with Zebra's retail technology solutions.
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Zebra's market-leading solutions and products improve customer satisfaction with a lower cost per interaction by keeping service representatives connected with colleagues, customers, management and the tools they use to satisfy customers across the supply chain.
In today's world, the demands on transportation and logistics companies are higher than ever. Dedicated Warehouse, Fleet and Delivery, and Yard and Terminal solutions enable visibility to every aspect of your business and keep operations running flawlessly around the clock.
Zebra's hospitality technology solutions equip your hotel and restaurant staff to deliver superior customer and guest service through inventory tracking and more.
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Technology is a key enabler in helping the Public Sector provide their frontline and back office workers automate business process and assets with a digital voice.
Zebra’s mobile computing, scanning, and printing solutions connect each operational area in your warehouse to give you the agility to realize transformational gains.
Zebra's range of mobile computers equip your workforce with the devices they need from handhelds and tablets to wearables and vehicle-mounted computers.
Zebra's desktop, mobile, industrial, and portable printers for barcode labels, receipts, RFID tags and cards give you smarter ways to track and manage assets.
Zebra's 1D and 2D corded and cordless barcode scanners anticipate any scanning challenge in a variety of environments, whether retail, healthcare, T&L or manufacturing.
Zebra's extensive range of RAIN RFID readers, antennas, and printers give you consistent and accurate tracking.
Choose Zebra's reliable barcode, RFID and card supplies carefully selected to ensure high performance, print quality, durability and readability.
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Zebra's rugged tablets and 2-in-1 laptops are thin and lightweight, yet rugged to work wherever you do on familiar and easy-to-use Windows or Android OS.
With Zebra's family of fixed industrial scanners and machine vision technologies, you can tailor your solutions to your environment and applications.
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Zebra's OEM scan engines, imagers, and private label OEM products offer flexible integration and help enhance product development with modern OEM technology.
Zebra's environmental sensors monitor temperature-sensitive products, offering data insights on environmental conditions across industry applications.
Keep labour costs low, your talent happy and your organisation compliant. Create an agile operation that can navigate unexpected schedule changes and customer demand to drive sales, satisfy customers and improve your bottom line.
Empower the front line with prioritised task notification and enhanced communication capabilities for easier collaboration and more efficient task execution.
Get full visibility of your inventory and automatically pinpoint leaks across all channels.
Reduce uncertainty when you anticipate market volatility. Predict, plan and stay agile to align inventory with shifting demand.
Drive down costs while driving up employee, security, and network performance with software designed to enhance Zebra's wireless infrastructure and mobile solutions.
Explore Zebra’s printer software to integrate, manage and monitor printers easily, maximising IT resources and minimising down time.
Make the most of every stage of your scanning journey from deployment to optimization. Zebra's barcode scanner software lets you keep devices current and adapt them to your business needs for a stronger ROI across the full lifecycle.
RFID development, demonstration and production software and utilities help you build and manage your RFID deployments more efficiently.
RFID development, demonstration and production software and utilities help you build and manage your RFID deployments more efficiently.
Zebra DNA is the industry’s broadest suite of enterprise software that delivers an ideal experience for all during the entire lifetime of every Zebra device.
Advance your digital transformation and execute your strategic plans with the help of the right location and tracking technology.
The Zebra Aurora suite of machine vision software enables users to solve their track-and-trace, vision inspection and industrial automation needs.
Zebra Aurora Focus brings a new level of simplicity to controlling enterprise-wide manufacturing and logistics automation solutions. With this powerful interface, it’s easy to set up, deploy and run Zebra’s Fixed Industrial Scanners and Machine Vision Smart Cameras, eliminating the need for different tools and reducing training and deployment time.
Aurora Imaging Library™, formerly Matrox Imaging Library, machine-vision software development kit (SDK) has a deep collection of tools for image capture, processing, analysis, annotation, display, and archiving. Code-level customization starts here.
Aurora Design Assistant™, formerly Matrox Design Assistant, integrated development environment (IDE) is a flowchart-based platform for building machine vision applications, with templates to speed up development and bring solutions online quicker.
Designed for experienced programmers proficient in vision applications, Aurora Vision Library provides the same sophisticated functionality as our Aurora Vision Studio software but presented in programming language.
Aurora Vision Studio, an image processing software for machine & computer vision engineers, allows quick creation, integration & monitoring of powerful OEM vision applications.
Adding innovative tech is critical to your success, but it can be complex and disruptive. Professional Services help you accelerate adoption, and maximise productivity without affecting your workflows, business processes and finances.
Zebra's Managed Service delivers worry-free device management to ensure ultimate uptime for your Zebra Mobile Computers and Printers via dedicated experts.
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Zebra's Circular Economy Program helps you manage today’s challenges and plan for tomorrow with smart solutions that are good for your budget and the environment.
In a new Zebra study, about 60% report improving work conditions and better adoption of technologies that make their jobs easier
BOURNE END, United Kingdom. – May 17, 2022 – Zebra Technologies Corporation (NASDAQ: ZBRA), an innovator at the front line of business with solutions and partners that deliver a performance edge, recently conducted a new global Warehousing Vision Study to explore the trends and sentiments driving operational decisions and spend in warehouses. The findings released today deliver encouraging news: warehouse operators are making significant investments to better fulfill the needs of both customers and workers and make it easier to fill open jobs.
Market Pressures Become Catalyst for Positive Changes
Nearly nine in 10 warehouse operators around the world agree they must implement new technology to be competitive in the on-demand economy, with 80% confirming the pandemic has prompted them to evolve and modernize more quickly.
In Europe specifically, over three-quarters of operators have accelerated their efforts. They’re turning their focus and spending most heavily toward technologies that support workforce augmentation and workflow automation. For example, the use of wearables, mobile printers and rugged tablets will increase in the next few years, along with mobile dimensioning software that automates parcel and carton measurements. Additionally, 23% of European warehouse operators have already deployed some form of autonomous mobile robots (AMR) today, which is in line with the global trend (27%). Within five years, that number is expected to grow to 88% in Europe and 90% around the world.
“We’re seeing a positive shift occurring in the supply chain and, specifically, within warehouses,” said Mark Wheeler, Director of Supply Chain Solutions, Zebra Technologies. “Most decision-makers believe investments in automation far outweigh the risk of doing nothing, and they are becoming more comfortable integrating all sorts of new technologies into their current operations and infrastructure.”
Warehouse associates are also becoming more comfortable with their employers’ use of advanced technologies. Less than half globally (45%) and in Europe (47%) say their employers have increased wages or offered bonuses amid labor constraints, yet most (82% globally and 81% in Europe) feel positively impacted by the situation.
Employers are improving work conditions in other ways, such as giving them more technology to use on the job and leveraging technology to create more flexible work shifts. In fact, an overwhelming nine in 10 warehouse associates agree on some level that technology advancements will make the warehouse environment more attractive to workers, even in times like these when supply chains are strained, demand is surging, and there’s increasing pressure to meet tighter deadlines.
Top Warehouse Challenges
Decision-makers are having a harder time getting customer orders out the door on time than they did three years ago, and they’re struggling to maintain inventory accuracy and visibility. They also admit they’re expected to deliver orders faster than ever to keep up with the on-demand economy, with rising transportation costs taking their toll on over 40% of warehouse operators spanning manufacturing, transportation, wholesale distribution, logistics and retail. This may not be surprising when you consider that respondents indicate their shipping volumes have increased more than 20% on average over the past two years.
Like associates, though, warehouse operators are viewing these challenges as catalysts for change and growth. Between now and 2025, over eight in 10 expect to increase the number of stock-keeping units (SKU) they carry and the volume of shipped items. They also plan to expand returns management operations, offer more value-added services, and increase their physical footprints, with both the number and size of warehouses increasing.
While six in 10 warehouse operators worldwide also want to increase headcount within the next year to right-size their workforces, around half admit finding (55%) and training (54%) workers in a timely manner remain big challenges. This is especially true in Europe, where 48% report it difficult to find workers and 50% say training is challenging. As a result, around eight in 10 decision-makers agree they will have to rely more on automation in the future.
Balancing the Scales: Augmenting the Workforce with Automation
While most warehouse operators both in Europe (88%) and globally (90%) will deploy AMRs for person-to-goods (P2G) picking, material movements and other automated inventory moves, 92% in Europe and 94% globally will invest in software that helps automate analytics and decision-making. They want to raise worker effectiveness and efficiency and reduce labor costs.
“As the pace of operations accelerates and workflows become more complex, warehouse operators have found the average time to get workers to full productivity is 4.7 weeks,” said James Lawton, Vice President and General Manager, Robotics Automation, Zebra Technologies. “Right now, decision-makers feel the most important labor initiative is to reduce unnecessary tasks so associates can focus on more customer-centric work. If warehouse operators automate through AMRs and workflow optimization software, it will be easier to scale operations and meet service level agreements as customer demands and labor availability fluctuate.”
Job Satisfaction – and Worker Retention – are Byproducts of Automation
With warehouse operators planning to increase automation, some might say jobs will be lost. Yet, study respondents believe automation may help keep more people in their jobs and fill empty ones. Over three-quarters of warehouse associates in Europe (75%) and worldwide (78%) say walking fewer miles per day would make their jobs more enjoyable, even if they had to pick or handle more items, and 81% strongly believe AMRs could make warehouse jobs less stressful.
Decision-makers should take note, as only 35% in Europe and 41% globally completely agree implementing warehouse technologies such as robotics and devices can help attract and retain workers even though most associates:
“Automation is the great equalizer, especially when labor is constrained or during unexpected surge periods or seasonal peaks when it may be difficult to scale the workforce quickly,” added Wheeler. “What’s interesting is associates feel more strongly about this than warehouse operators right now.”
Five-Year Technology Outlook for Warehouse Operations
Eighty-five percent of decision makers say they have implemented mobility so front-line workers can capture each inventory move they make, and most feel they are optimizing the use of their devices to fit the task, safety, and ergonomics. However, more than eight in 10 warehouse associates and around three-quarters of decision-makers in Europe and worldwide are concerned they will not meet their business objectives unless more technology investments are made to improve operations, with associates in the transportation (92%) and logistics (88%) sectors feeling most strongly about this need. As a result, more than six in 10 decision-makers say they will invest in technologies that increase inventory and asset visibility within their warehouses and overall visibility throughout supply chains over the next five years.
Nine in 10 expect their use of sensor-based technologies such as radio frequency identification (RFID), computer vision, fixed industrial scanning, and machine vision systems to become more prevalent over the next five years. As businesses invest in advanced technologies that enable more visibility, real-time guidance and data-driven performance, they’re focusing on increasing team productivity and better utilization of assets, equipment and people, which equates to improved worker well-being and overall market competitiveness.
However, it will become critical for warehouse operators to become more thoughtful about how they implement and integrate technologies as they increasingly digitalize workflows and scale systems. Following a phase-based roadmap will be key to steady, sustainable maturity.
KEY REGIONAL FINDINGS
Asia Pacific:
Europe
Latin America
North America
SURVEY BACKGROUND AND METHODOLOGY
Zebra’s Warehousing Vision Study was conducted in January and February 2022 by third-party research firm Azure Knowledge Corporation. It includes feedback from over 1,500 decision-makers and associates that manage and maintain warehouse or distribution center operations in manufacturing, retail, transportation, logistics and wholesale distribution across North America, Latin America, Europe, and Asia-Pacific.
ABOUT ZEBRA TECHNOLOGIES
Zebra (NASDAQ: ZBRA) empowers organizations to thrive in the on-demand economy by making every front-line worker and asset at the edge visible, connected and fully optimized. With an ecosystem of more than 10,000 partners across more than 100 countries, Zebra serves customers of all sizes – including 94% of the Fortune 100 – with an award-winning portfolio of hardware, software, services and solutions that digitize and automate workflows. Supply chains are more dynamic, customers and patients are better served, and workers are more engaged when they utilize Zebra innovations that help them sense, analyze and act in real time. Zebra recently expanded its industrial automation portfolio with its Fetch Robotics acquisition and increased its machine vision and AI software capabilities with the acquisitions of Adaptive Vision and antuit.ai. Zebra is #25 on Newsweek’s inaugural list of America’s 100 Most Loved Workplaces and #79 on Forbes’ list of America’s 500 Best Midsize Employers. Learn more at www.zebra.com or sign up for news alerts. Follow Zebra’s Your Edge blog, LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook, and check out our Story Hub: Zebra Perspectives.
Media Contact:
Daniel Blackman
Zebra Technologies
+44 (0) 7408 864 597
Daniel.Blackman@zebra.com
Industry Analyst Contact:
Kasia Fahmy
Zebra Technologies
+1-224-306-8654
k.fahmy@zebra.com
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ZEBRA and the stylized Zebra head are trademarks of Zebra Technologies Corp., registered in many jurisdictions worldwide. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. ©2024 Zebra Technologies Corp. and/or its affiliates.