Supply Chain & Logistics
Autonomous inventory counting with drones or robots
Deploy autonomous drones or robots in warehouses to perform continuous inventory counts, replacing periodic manual cycle counts and reducing shrinkage through constant visibility.
40–60%
reduction in inventory counting labour
Opportunity assessment
Minor improvement. Small efficiency gain with limited effect on overall turnover or bottom line.
Challenging. Significant technical work required. Likely needs an AI engineer or specialist vendor. Not a quick win.
Moderate data needs. Works with data most businesses hold, but will likely need consolidation, cleaning, or reformatting before use.
Low risk. Limited external exposure. A human reviews output before it reaches anyone outside the team.
Moderate people impact. Part of someone's working day changes. Requires training and some adjustment time, but roles remain broadly the same.
Tooling required
Things to consider
GNC deployed Corvus autonomous drones at two distribution centres covering 40,000 bin locations, performing 7–8 flights daily. Inventory control staff reduced from 20 to 13, with redeployed workers moving to higher-value tasks (Inbound Logistics).
Warehouse layout and lighting must support autonomous navigation. High racking, narrow aisles, and poor lighting degrade accuracy. The warehouse may need physical modifications.
The business case depends on warehouse size and count frequency. For a 10,000-pallet warehouse counted annually, the payback period is long. For a 100,000-location DC counted weekly, the case is compelling.
Experiment starter: Run a pilot in one zone of your largest DC. Deploy autonomous counting for 4 weeks alongside your normal cycle count process. Compare accuracy, time, and cost per count. Stadium Goods achieved 99.9% licence-plate reading accuracy with drone counting across 500,000 SKUs (Supply Chain Brain).
Go deeper in the playbook
Section — Opportunity Identification, including the AI Opportunity Assessment ScorecardSection — The Experimentation FrameworkFeasibility is limited here — the experimentation framework covers how to run a bounded pilot before committing.More in Supply Chain & Logistics
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