This Month in Modern: Taking technology to the next level

Over my years in B2B, every once in a while I see industries outside the one I’m covering adopt technologies in innovative ways—a cross-pollination of ideas and applications that make sense. Think surgical suites in hospitals applying similar air filtration as semiconductor fabs.

This month in Modern, we kick off 2023 with a unique look at how materials handling technology is being put to work in vertical farming, an agricultural process in which crops are grown on top of each other—rather than in acre after acre of traditional horizontal rows—allowing for conservation in space and resulting in a higher crop yield per square foot of land used.

Executive editor Bob Trebilcock takes us inside Bowery Farming, the largest vertical farming company in the United States. As he reports, Bowery’s crops are grown in special palletized trays that are put away into a storage location. Once in position—often up to 40-feet high—a combination of light, temperature, humidity and water are applied.

“It makes sense,” says Trebilcock. “Going vertical uses the building’s cube, and in the end, the application represents a unique combination of a traditional, but effective automated materials handling technology. It uses a pallet-handling AS/RS along with sensors and LED lighting, and it demonstrates that just when we think we’ve mined all of the uses for materials handling automation, new possibilities continue to emerge.”

One area that may need to be mined for benefit a little more these days is inventory management. As senior editor Roberto Michel reports this month, the disruptions of the past few years have exposed a general weakness in this vital area of supply chain management practice.

“One thing we knew, but was certainly reinforced, is that inventory management is critical,” says Michel. “And while no single technology will guarantee best-in-class inventory management, the good news is that now multiple technologies are contributing to improved inventory management, from WMS upgrades, to updated e-devices, to the evolution of planning solutions based on artificial intelligence.”

Michel dives into all three of those developments. But he’s not done there. He also offers us a look into the evolution of new data capture technologies—more pieces that go into creating a complete inventory management puzzle.

“We’ve been using human-triggered bar code data collection processes and gear since the 1970s, and it’s certainly here for the long term,” says Michel. “However, we’re seeing the evolution of newer forms of data capture technology that promises more visibility into operational processes with fewer manually triggered data collection tasks.”

Michel dives into a few technologies that put RFID tags and readers to work, as well as solutions that use RTLS that leverage ultrawideband (UWB) and other types of beacons or tags that are now gaining momentum.

“Some of these newer hands-free ‘locationing’ technologies can be applied selectively at key points,” Michel adds. “And while bar coding is here to stay, these newer data capture solutions are catching on and will be worth following to see how far they can take us.”