How Automation & Robotics Are Influencing Warehouse Design in Australia
Australia's warehousing industry is undergoing a major transformation as automation and robotics reshape the way warehouses are designed, built, and operated. Driven by rising labour costs, rapid e-commerce growth, and increasing demand for efficiency, warehouse developers and logistics companies are rethinking traditional layouts in favour of intelligent, technology-first facilities. These changes are not just about adding robots, it is a fundamental redesign of space, flow, and infrastructure to support the machines of the future.
Australian Technology Evolution
Early Automation
Australian warehouses were slow to adapt to automation technology compared to international peers. Relatively small population and large geographic distances between major cities meant automation was initially exclusive to the very biggest market participants (Coles, Woolworths, Toll), and largely in NDC style operations.
Democratisation of Automation
The rise of mobile automation opened up access to the wider market and also saw a shift in the automation opportunities for satellite facilities closer to end consumers. Autonomous Mobile Robot (AMR) systems could be deployed at a fraction of the capital cost of traditional large scale fixed automation systems. The modular nature of the systems provided the flexibility for growing businesses to scale their operation as they grew rather than having to choose between building significant excess capacity or risking future bottlenecking of their supply chain.
Evolving Needs
AMRs bought many new players into the market, but the shelf-to-person style had an obvious drawback. With storage racks sitting under 3 metres high, this left vast unused space above in typical Australian warehouses. Given the high rental costs of industrial real estate in the Australian market this has seen a push towards high bay tote-to-person systems to reduce footprint and increase storage density.
What’s Next?
The most challenging step to automate within a warehouse is the unit level pick. These tasks are still largely completed by humans, due to better ability to handle a large variety of products and react appropriately to any unexpected situations. OEMs are approaching this challenge from various angles; with examples from fixed robot arms completing piece picking, all the way to humanoid robots, who theoretically can complete any task a human can. While this technology is still in the early stages of development, improvements to vision systems and the scale of AI investment lead us to believe it is more a case of ‘when’ than ‘if’.
Designing the Warehouse of the Future
The supply chain has traditionally been seen primarily as a cost centre. However, the likes of Amazon have shown it can be used to drive competitive advantage over competitors to deliver sales and profit growth. With this in mind, companies should first consider what is their strategy for most optimal route to end customers. Large scale NDC may provide cost benefits, smaller satellite sites closer to end customers can provide faster delivery times, hybrid approaches with a reduced range of best sellers coupled with a main facility should also be considered.
The number of different technology options available to companies has increased dramatically over recent years. Choosing the optimal technology is key to achieving return on investment. The best warehouse solution will be heavily influenced by the type and variety of products a company sells, the outbound volume, and the logistical requirements to deliver to end customer. Ensuring all of these factors are appropriately weighed is essential in selecting the correct solution.
“Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future.” Despite this we can look to build systems that don’t prohibit the introduction of additional technologies in the future. Businesses can change very quickly and being able to adapt systems to cope with additional storage, throughput, seasonality, or capacity requirements is important. By planning for this change ahead of time additional redundancy can be built into IT stack and electrical build to significantly reduce the complexity of future system expansion. Selecting more modular systems also makes ‘build as you grow’ systems feasible.