Drones have been deployed to perform inspections and other maintenance-related activities in the manufacturing industries for a few years now. Now, Nokia has launched what it says is “an industry-first, true inventory counting capability” called Nokia Autonomous Inventory Monitoring Service (AIMS). With this service, Nokia says “warehouse operators use autonomous drones to individually count items, such as eaches, cases or cartons, in any racked inventory location accurately and efficiently.” The drones can also detect and report on empty bin locations.
Nokia developed AIMS to address issues related to warehouse shrinkage, which can account for 3-5% of a company’s revenue. In addition, Nokia noted that 25% of shrinkage is due to administrative errors. In its release announcing AIMS, Nokia said, “This [shrinkage] combined with continued pressure to fulfill orders rapidly has pushed warehouse operators to a tipping point of futureproofing and automating operations to gain a business edge.”
Using the AIMS drones, identified inventory counts are compared with warehouses’ existing WMS or ERP systems to identify any quantity mismatches. Pointing out a key advantage of AIMS, Nokia said, “typical cycle counts use the ABC method, where inventory is counted based on varying frequency. Nokia AIMS checks every location much more frequently to ensure customers get a more accurate, reliable and complete picture of their inventory.”
Nokia AIMS is delivered as a service that includes the drones, software and a cloud-based user interface. The company said its autonomous AIMS drones can complete cycle counts of 300 inventory locations per hour, which is approximately 7-10 times faster than human workers.
Benefits of Nokia’s AIMS with the use of drones include:
- Drones can be scheduled to autonomously scan any aisles at any time.
- Reduction in manual misplaced investigations.
- Inventory can be search by location or product ID.
- Up-to-date inventory snapshots and WMS mismatches can be viewed in office or remotely.
- Workers can focus on higher value tasks such as picking and packing rather than cycle counting.
- A 250,000 sq ft warehouse can completely scanned with AIMS drones in 2-4 weeks.
Existing Nokia AIMS customers will automatically gain access to this new capability via a software update with no additional costs. New Nokia AIMS customers who sign up in 2024 will receive this added capability for free, for one year.
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