Ware, a San Francisco-based technology company, launched its first warehouse inventory automation system March 9 at the Modex 2020 mobile robotics show at Atlanta’s Georgia World Congress Center. Company officials say it’s built on Skydio 2, “the world’s smartest drone.”
Tracking and counting inventory cost-effectively is one of the $1.9 trillion warehousing industry’s greatest challenges. Ware’s product was designed specifically to address this, helping customers increase the accuracy and frequency of their inventory tracking, while simultaneously reducing its cost.
“The extreme growth of e-commerce has caused warehousing to expand rapidly over the past two decades,” says Ian Smith, CEO and co-founder of Ware. “That, combined with the historically-low unemployment rate in the U.S., means that demand for the warehouse workforce has outstripped the supply. Warehouses are increasingly looking towards automation and robotics as solutions to fill these gaps in their inventory departments. That’s why we created Ware.”
Most warehouses and distribution centers strive for twice-yearly or quarterly full-counts of their inventory, but because of labor challenges and competing priorities, many don’t reach those goals.
“Today, our solution can deliver full-counts every month—increasing most customers’ frequency by six times,” explains Joseph Moster, CTO and co-founder of Ware. “Our system leverages fleets of drones to capture images of every bin location in a facility, giving operators a visual audit history of the status of their inventory and proactively alerting them to potential issues.”
MODEX 2020 is a supply chain industry tradeshow, featuring nearly 1,000 solution providers. It was held March 9-12 at the Georgia World Congress Center in Atlanta.
FlytWare, a California-based aerial inventory solution company, showcased its fully autonomous drones at MODEX 2020. Visitors at FlytWare’s booth learned first-hand how 3PL and air cargo facilities have started deploying inventory drones in their distribution centers and warehouses, powered by FlytBase intelligent automation software.
“We are seeing strong interest from customers in piloting FlytWare at their warehouses, distribution centers and air cargo facilities,” says Nitin Gupta, CEO of FlytBase. “This is driven not only by e-commerce and higher velocity supply chains, but also by the shortage of skilled labor, their desire to increase worker safety and demand for richer inventory data. The surprising discovery for us has been the buy-in from a variety of inventory stakeholders, ranging from VPs and CFOs to warehouse GMs, continuous improvement managers and corporate innovation teams.”
Ware deploys autonomous, self-flying drones, combined with machine learning, inside warehouses to automate their inventory tracking. A partner of Skydio and funded by Bloomberg Beta, Ware works with the world’s largest 3PL’s and global brands to improve their accuracy and save money. For more info, visit http://getware.com
FlytBase is an enterprise software company focused on autonomous drone solutions, particularly warehouse applications. The company offers intelligent software that leverages reliable, off-the-shelf hardware and enables automation of inventory management use-cases for warehouses, distribution centers, air cargo facilities and fulfillment centers. For more info, visit https://flytware.com.
