Manual inventory counts in outdoor areas require time and resources and expose teams to risks, becoming less efficient as the operation grows. Using drones speeds up data collection, automates counting, and provides more consistent inventory information. With AIRLOG, the entire process is integrated into a dedicated platform, allowing managers to track inventory with accurate data and reduce the resources devoted to manual audits.
For those who manage operations involving outdoor storage (construction materials, coils, containers, industrial equipment, or agricultural products), inventory audits are often one of the most time-consuming and least efficient processes on the operational calendar. Entire teams spend days – sometimes weeks – manually counting stacks and pallets, with a considerable margin of error and safety risks associated with climbing stacks or walking long distances.
This article explains where the traditional process falls short, what changes when the count is performed by drone, and how an operations manager can determine whether it’s time to switch methods.
Three problems recur in virtually all operations that still count outdoor inventory manually:
1. Time scales with volume, not with complexity. Doubling the amount of stored material roughly doubles the time it takes to count everything. This makes regular audits costly as the operation grows.
2. Human error adds up. Counting thousands of stacked units – often under difficult lighting conditions or with limited access – naturally leads to errors, such as pallets being counted twice, units hidden behind others, and mixed-up manual records.
3. It exposes employees to avoidable risks. Climbing piles of material, walking among unstable stacks, or traversing large outdoor storage areas in intense sun or heavy rain is a risk that most operations would prefer to eliminate.
Drone-based inventory auditing addresses these three issues by replacing physical counting with aerial mapping of the entire storage area, followed by automated image processing to identify and count each unit of inventory.
In practice, this means:
This is where it’s worth clarifying the expectation raised by this article’s title: collecting data in the field is, in fact, a matter of minutes to a few hours, depending on the size of the area. The entire process, from data collection to the delivery of the final data on a platform, naturally involves a few additional processing and validation steps. Even so, even with these steps, the total time required for the process is still a fraction of what a traditional manual count would take.
Airlog, from HPSOLUTIONS, was designed specifically for this scenario: counting inventory stored outdoors using drones, with data collection, analysis, and reporting on a platform customized to the needs of each operation.
Some specific figures regarding the solution:
For an operations manager, the value lies in transforming a process that traditionally took the team days to complete and posed safety risks into an automated workflow, with reliable data available on a dedicated platform, freeing up the team to focus on inventory management rather than counting inventory.
In short, manual inventory counting in outdoor settings remains a viable solution for small-scale or one-time operations. However, it has significant limitations in terms of scalability, accuracy, and the safety of field teams.
The use of drones makes it possible to overcome these challenges in an integrated manner, substantially reducing the total execution time and increasing the reliability of the data collected.
Solutions like AIRLOG make this process more accessible and efficient through a platform developed from the ground up for operations managers who need accurate, timely, and consistent inventory information.
