Hate to ask you to do this. But (please) put your phone down. Maybe even turn it off. It’s time for a talk we’ve avoided having for some time. And it can’t be put off any longer. And, yes, it’s about autonomous lift trucks. In all likelihood, you haven’t given them much thought. Lately or at all. And two years ago, that would have been fairly typical. That was even the case last year. So, you are not alone. But if you continue to ignore autonomous lift trucks, you stand a chance of being really alone, if you get the…
叉车已经证明在过去的每一天few years, the easy part their information management is collecting the data. The hard part is figuring out how to make good use of it. Roger Tenney calls it intimidation by data. And he should know. For the past 35 years, he’s focused on telematics and how people react to it, most recently as senior manager of telematics and technologies solutions at Mitsubishi Logisnext Americas. Today, the vast majority of lift trucks sold have onboard telematics technology that monitors a wide range of data from who is driving the truck…
I’ve never seen so much interest, if not desperation, to improve fulfillment,” says James Lawton, vice president and general manager of robotics automation at Zebra Technologies. And that’s true for companies as diverse as FedEx and iHerb. Both companies, and many others in between, have recently turned to piece picking robotic systems to solve their fulfillment challenges. But we are to a great extent still in the early stages of robotic piece picking. After all, it was only January 2015 that Modern Materials Handling reported on what was probably one of the first robotic piece-picking pilots “The robots are coming…
We’re all familiar with the saying “may you live in interesting times.” Depending on when it’s said, the proverb can be interpreted as either a blessing or a curse. There’s also the proverb—many happy returns. It’s usually intended to wish someone a long string of future birthdays. However, many happy returns is now emerging as the proverbial blessing and a curse in the supply chain. “Most companies look at returns as a necessary evil [curse] and don’t treat them much better than you might expect,” says Nick Vyas of the Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California.…
It’s got to be here somewhere. Stop for just a minute. Let’s look around. It shouldn’t be that difficult to find the edge in materials handling operations. But then again, maybe it is. What exactly is the edge? Where is it? Why does it matter? These are all good questions, especially if someone has told you only IT needs to know or care about edge. They’re wrong. And just for the record, we’re not talking Microsoft Edge on your laptop. What we are talking about is data collection with automatic data capture (ADC) hardware from scanners to mobile terminals and…
A new survey from Grant Thornton LLP, a professional-services firms, reveals that many chief financial officers (CFOs) are preparing for a challenging 2022. Specifically, Grant Thornton’s survey revealed a sharp decline in optimism. When asked about the U.S. economy, just 57% of CFOs have a positive outlook for the next six months — a significant drop from 69% in Q3. What’s more, net pessimism almost doubled, from 11% in Q3 to 21% this quarter. The firm’s latest survey also found 51% of CFOs expect a negative impact from the new COVID-19 variant. When asked what actions they will pursue to…
The COVID pandemic has brought about significant disruptions in the supply chain such as dozens of ships from Asia remain sitting at docks in California and elsewhere, unable to unload their cargo. That’s lead to a variety of problems such as supply shortages and price inflation. Now more than ever the U.S. needs collaborative supply chain professionals to solve the immense challenges the pandemic has caused. A recent research article by Dr. Siqi Ma, Ph.D., assistant professor in the Department of Management at The University of Akron suggests that the collaborative supply chain professionals we need right now to solve…
Over at Dick’s Sporting Goods, they use four words to guide distribution center operations: Flexible Fast Flawless Frugal. Certainly, those are four powerful words when talking about fulfilling direct-to-store and direct-to-consumer orders. And, many DC technologies can help accomplish those four things. But perhaps the most often overlooked technology partner here is data capture from bar codes to voice and portable terminals, to name a few. “Most companies have a narrow view of what data capture can do. Too often, they think of it just for identifying inventory and tracking it at various stages along the way,” explains Linda Grady,…