Warehouses across southern Africa are striving to maintain profitability and efficiency in response to consumer demands for faster, cost-effective, and high-quality goods. Unlike many global counterparts, South African warehouses have yet to adopt advanced technologies such as automated guided vehicles or robotic picking and storage retrieval systems, which provide a competitive edge in other regions. The significant costs associated with these technologies continue to limit their widespread adoption.Despite this, Trevor Reichert and Prodigious Gugulethu of Forte Supply Chain Solutions highlight a strong emphasis on streamlining and optimising Warehouse Management Systems (WMS). "Many clients have bounced back from the Covid-19 slump and are now eager to implement improved systems to enhance their warehousing operations," Reichert told Freight News. He also noted a surge in the construction of new warehouses and distribution centres, which has driven a higher adoption of WMS.He said that the company had observed a growing demand for business intelligence and analytics to complement WMS, Enterprise Resource Planning, and other related data systems. "These tools provide clear, concise overviews that illuminate the current state of operations, finance, human resources, and more. By integrating diverse data sources and presenting them through relevant visualisations, we can deliver valuable insights that enable management to identify areas needing attention and strategic focus. Disconnected data systems remain a challenge for many. Accurate reporting across all data is critical to overcoming this issue.”According to Gugulethu, rising costs remain a major challenge in the warehousing sector. “Increased operating costs, including rent, energy and labour, are putting pressure on profitability. Labour in itself is a challenge for the sector, which faces real difficulty in finding and retaining skilled warehouse workers, especially in certain regions. We also see a high staff turnover – meaning a constant need to retrain and upskill, and this results in duplicated cost and effort for the sector.” LV
