Chicago-based Mintel’s Global New Products Database shows that between January 2015 and January 2016, 5,226 new beverages were launched in North America. In fact, similar numbers of launches were recorded over the past five years. As beverage manufacturers continue to pump out these products, distributors have had to find ways to accommodate the growing number of SKUs. For many warehouses, automation is the cornerstone of their operations as they keep pace with their growing inventories.

Aaron Corcoran, account executive at Westfalia Technologies Inc., York, Pa., notes that SKU proliferation has been impacting warehouse storage systems for the past decade. “As SKU growth continues, it brings a change with it that affects the warehouse in other ways, more complex customer orders,” he says. “While in the past, most customer orders were made up of full pallets of one SKU, or pallets with multiple layers that each contained one SKU, now orders are going down to the case level. This creates a larger and more complex area needed for creating these orders. More SKUs, either in pallet form or in case-flow racking, need to be presented to picking operators to fulfill the customer orders. As this complexity grows, companies are looking to automation in different ways to maximize their impact.”