E
ven in 2025, it’s not unusual for warehouse workers to pull information from multiple systems using spreadsheets, whiteboards, emails, and other largely manual tools to gather the data, says Keith Moore, CEO of AutoScheduler, which offers a warehouse orchestration platform. All the work required to manage the data leaves less time to draw insight from it. If businesses instead pull the data into a single repository and leverage arti cial intelligence (AI) solutions, they can spend less time keeping their warehouses going day-to-day, and gain greater intelligence to drive decisions, Moore says. While the promise of AI has been touted for years, companies that have implemented AI solutions are now starting to see returns on their investments through operational and labor ef ciencies, better tracking of capital assets, and more accurate forecasting and insightful decisions, among other bene ts. “AI is not a science project anymore,” Moore says. And while AI solutions haven’t yet hit the majority of companies, he predicts that they’ll be mainstream in about ve years. Companies that move rst and fast to leverage the power of AI can gain an edge. Here are a few companies doing just that. PEPSICO’S WAREHOUSE EFFICIENCY BUBBLES UP As operations at PepsiCo’s warehouses grew more complex and leveraged different technologies, the beverage company increasingly relied on its experienced employees to determine how best to move products from various areas within the warehouses to their nal destinations, said Peter Hall warehouse orchestration senior manager, in a recent podcast with AutoScheduler. These employees had to research each load and then determine if they had the right products and people in place to complete them. When the pandemic hit, the average tenure and experience of warehouse employees dropped. A warehouse orchestration system from AutoScheduler now helps PepsiCo determine, among other information, the number of employees and the amount of time and space needed to activate a planned number of loads. Sites that have implemented the software are averaging about a 12% increase in moves per hour, Hall said. SGWS DRINKS IN FORECAST ACCURACY Southern Glazer’s Wine & Spirits (SGWS) distributes beverage alcohol, with operations in 47 U.S. markets, as well as Canada and the Caribbean. Each year, it makes more than six million deliveries, distributing more than 11,000 supplier brands to both national retailers and local restaurants.
PepsiCo (top) leverages AI to enhance warehouse labor management. Southern Glazer's (bottom) taps into Amazon's SageMaker AI solution to generate demand forecasts. Southern Glazer’s has done a great deal of work leveraging AI to re ne its sales forecasts, says Diego Fonseca, vice president, supply chain and logistics for SGWS. Not only does the company have vast quantities of sales data—some extends back one century—but planners incorporate into their forecasts the intelligence they receive from the sales, trade development, and commercial operations areas. Manually cleaning and working with this volume of data is tremendously time consuming. Today, planners can feed this information into Amazon’s SageMaker AI solution, which can generate a demand forecast that considers historical data, current promotional events, and seasonality, among other factors. “Arti cial intelligence does well with long histories and databases,” Fonseca says. Similarly, to determine when to place orders, SGWS’s replenishment team continually looks at forecasted demand, current inventory levels, and supplier lead times, while factoring in potential disruptions such as port strikes, as well as suggested order quantities. They also work with suppliers to account for product availability. The AI solution can quickly identify different patterns and use machine learning to generate replenishment models. Planners can spend less time ne-tuning the more predictable business lines and instead can focus on improving the accuracy of more complex forecasts, such as those for spirits.
April 2025 • Inbound Logistics 57
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