Automation has huge value in its ability to reduce costs and improve productivity, and progress in robotics has introduced more choice and flexibility to warehouse operations. However, tracking and traceability has become much more of a focus. Good customer service is one important element, but if your warehouse handles anything of high value, or restricted or regulated goods, that visibility can be essential.
A current example is vaping products. From 1 October 2026, Vaping Products Duty and Vaping Duty Stamps will apply to UK warehouses. Each vaping product will need to have a secure stamp with digital elements such as QR codes so that the products can be traced throughout the supply chain and show that Duty has been paid.
Do manual checks still work?
In these types of scenario one response can be to add a manual checkpoint, so there’s an extra inspection and sign-off that can be recorded. This works to a point, but as order volumes grow or lead times shorten, manual checks can slow things down and don’t give the certainty or visibility of exactly what happened to an order and at what point in the supply chain process.
For regulated product lines this becomes much more important, and our experience with Pets at Home showed this. Part of the operation processes prescription pet medicine orders, known internally as SQP orders, because they require sign-off from a Suitably Qualified Person. These are also time-critical subscription orders, and the process had become a manual, labour-intensive bottleneck that limited throughput and created compliance risk as volumes grew. Using an integrated software and automation system, we introduced order segregation by type, automated routing, and packing through conveyors tailored to the SQP fulfilment flow.
The system automates containerisation based on order type, SKU profile, and packaging material selection, removing manual decision-making at each step. Error rates reduced significantly, accuracy increased, and the volume of prescription orders that could be processed without additional specialist resource increased substantially.
Built in traceability
This level of visibility and accuracy is a natural result of building traceability into the automated process itself, rather than adding it on top. In an automated system, each scan, conveyor movement, routing decision, packing operation and system handoff can create a timestamped event linked back to the order, SKU, tote or carton. This creates an audit trail naturally as part of operating the system rather than relying on a separate manual process.
At Breathe Technologies, we’ve always taken an automation-first approach to our software platform. The result is enterprise-level software with automation integrated at its core. A platform capable of orchestrating fully automated systems, managing high volumes of order processing, and providing real-time visibility across the operation.
HMRC’s recent vaping rules are a reminder that the bar keeps rising, and best practice is to build traceability into your everyday processes from the start.
Breathe Technologies is a UK-based warehouse systems integration specialist, helping customers optimise their warehouse operations through intelligent automation and software solutions. BreatheIQ is the proprietary software platform of Breathe Technologies.
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