Future of Logistics

I attended at?LogiMAT 2022?- International Trade Fair for Intralogistics Solutions and Process Management this week and decided to share about 2 highlights from the fair:

1. Automation: Not nice to have anymore

Supply chain ranks first out of the sectors that are disrupted during pandemic outbreak. Shopping trends moving to online platforms, currency & oil price peaks, global chip crisis, global conteyner shortages, constant increasing trend on shortage of labor and available warehouse spaces made the fire for companies to survive first and evolve themselves to cater for the new standards of business. In this respect, automation is definetely and inevitably a “must have” now for the logistics habitat rather than “nice to have”. It has’t necessarily maeaning a full automation for each and every company but it’s a must for everyone to structure a roadmap for automation and start from somewhere. If a job or process can be done by manpower it means that there is an opportunity there to be automated. Pallet transfer from A to B, truck loading or unloading, putaway, picking, streching a pallet or even counting; there is always a trigger point to benefit from automation. You can apply agile approach in automation as well. I sincerely believe that we are now on the edge of robot revolution. The “Value” of a human being in the system is moving from muscle power to brain power. It’s not enough to invest in technology itself, but it is also the era of attaining “Competency”. It’s time for attracting and retaining your best talents in the game. Show them the shiny side of the coin rather than dusty one. Automated Reach Trucks, AGVs, AMRs, miniloads, shuttle systems and sorters were the rising stars of Logimat 2022. I am deeply impressed to see vacuum layer gripping systems that can recognise the morphology of products. Autonomous Mobile Robots (AMR) will be the future of pallet movements. It was truly sensational to attend a trade forum and listen about safety principles of manpower and robots working together in the same environment. Ergonomics will not be neglected in the future in the depots. The conveyors, vacuum lifting systems and special designed supportive wearable waistcoats will make life easier for workers definitely. Lithium-Ion batteries are the future reality.

2. E-commerce is restructuring the flow.

The new era customer asks for to get the product whenever and wherever. You can never provide this “Value” to them unless you orchestrate an integrated logistics. At the past a handling unit in the warehouses and the in the trucks were substantially pallets and boxes. But now it’s parcels. Mass production is switching with customized production. You need to manage more SKU’s, more peaks and more uncertainty. 3D printers are in use. You need to be more flexible and more agile if you want to meet the needs of customers. You need the manage all this complexity and if so, you need to restructure your flow. You need more integrated systems working in harmony, you need a digital transformation to be faster, you need artficial intelligence (AI), decision support systems, algorithms to manage your service levels, costs and quality. In Logimat 2022, i have seen that all materal handling equipments, storage systems and IT systems are developed to make the flow of E-Commerce and the investments have been channeled around this flow intensely. Miniloads, sorters, conveyors, grippers, electrical trucks, WMS, TMS, AI supported optimization tools and RFIDs were the featured investments in the show. I admired to hear about "Anticipatory Shipping" that Amazon has filed a?patent for a shipping system designed to cut delivery times by predicting what buyers are going to buy before they buy it and shipping products in their general direction, or even right to their door, before the sales click even (or ever) falls.