Gather AI says its latest capabilities can reduce the time spent on manual counts by 90%. | Source: Gather AI
Gather AI today announced two new capabilities to its drone-based inventory-scanning system. It said it can now provide inferred case counting and location occupancy services. The company said these capabilities enable warehouses to get automated, digitized counts and location utilization reports, resulting in higher on-time shipment rates while reducing dedicated counting labor.
Warehouse operators need to know the correct inventory levels in each location so they can ensure that items ship on time and space is well utilized. The average warehouse meets shipping deadlines only 96% of the time and has a cube utilization of 81%, according to the Warehousing Education & Research Council’s (WERC) 2023 DC Measures Annual Survey & Report.
While accurate inventory counts are essential, counting cases and monitoring inventory inaccuracies manually is slow and aggregates these challenges further. Gather AI claimed that its system can scan up to 900 pallets per hour.
Carnegie Mellon University alumni Sankal Arora, Daniel Maturana, and Geetesh Dubey co-founded the Pittsburgh-based company in 2017. Gather AI’s drone-based system is currently deployed in warehouses across third-party logistics, retail distribution, manufacturing, food & beverage, and air cargo.
“Several customers require us to count cases as part of our cycle counting program,” stated AJ Raaker, director of warehouse development at Taylor Logistics Inc., a leading third-party logistics provider (3PL).
“Using Gather AI’s drone inventory monitoring and the inferred case-count feature is 87% more efficient than having our team do physical cycle counting,” Raaker added. “The efficiency gain enables our team to prioritize revenue-generating direct labor activities.”
Enhanced capabilities make counts more accurate, Gather AI says
Gather AI’s drones take pictures of each pallet location in a warehouse. Then, the company‘s AI analyses the pictures, reading multiple barcodes and text and detecting empty locations.
With today’s release, Gather AI’s system shows inferred case counts for full and partial pallets and location-occupancy percentages on the customer web dashboard. This can reduce the time and labor of verifying case counts, as well as help warehouses find space to consolidate inventory, avoiding “honeycombing,” said the company.
“Our mission is to bring unprecedented real-time inventory insights to warehouse operators,” said Arora, now the company’s CEO. “Our computer vision and AI analyze inventory images offering warehouse operators access to a richer source of information than barcodes. Our new inferred case counting and location occupancy capabilities push the art of what’s possible while solving for error-prone, labor-intensive tasks for our customers.”
Drones and AI to help consolidate inventory
With inferred case count, the Gather AI said warehouse operators can reduce the time spent on manual counts by 90%. Computer vision and AI compare information the system extracted from inferred images to estimate the number of cases on a pallet with what’s stored in the warehouse management system (WMS).
The system flags pallets with few cases so they can be replenished before items run out and shipments are missed. In addition, inferred capabilities allow warehouse operators to prioritize labor by having people count only the pallets that are off from what the WMS expects.
With location occupancy, warehouse operators can know where to consolidate pallets, increase space utilization, and improve fixed expense efficiency. With this capability, computer vision and AI read images to measure the space available on a pallet. The system then identifies consolidation opportunities.
Earlier this month, Gather AI raised $17 million in funding, bringing its total investment to date to $34 million. The company said it plans to use the investment to scale operations and continue to attract customers by solving supply chain problems with rich data.