Ben Ames has spent 20 years as a journalist since starting out as a daily newspaper reporter in Pennsylvania in 1995. From 1999 forward, he has focused on business and technology reporting for a number of trade journals, beginning when he joined Design News and Modern Materials Handling magazines. Ames is author of the trail guide "Hiking Massachusetts" and is a graduate of the Columbia School of Journalism.
Norwegian material handling automation provider AutoStore System Inc. today opened its first U.S.-based facility, saying it plans to use the office to host education and training initiatives supporting North American sales of its goods-to-person fulfillment system.
The Derry, N.H., location includes some 20,000 square feet of office and warehouse space, and will be used for training and demonstration activities for the company's dealers, as well as for storage and distribution of spare parts. The building currently houses six employees, but the company is planning to hire three more workers in coming months, according to AutoStore.
The site could also eventually host manufacturing activities, depending on the company's growth rate over the next five years, company executives said in a ribbon-cutting ceremony held at the location.
AutoStore makes a high-density storage system with inventory stowed in a grid of stacked, plastic bins. In response to orders from a user's warehouse management system (WMS) software platform, the system deploys wheeled robots that ride on rails erected above the stacks, retrieving and rearranging bins for delivery to work stations. Employees stand at each of those stations, performing fulfillment tasks such as pick, pack and ship, pick and place on conveyor, or replenishment.
Workers can be trained to use the system in just five to 10 minutes, AutoStore Business Development Manager Mark Hasler said in a tour of a demonstration system operating at the new facility. In comparison to alternative material handling systems such as shuttle systems, horizontal carousels, or mini-load cranes, the AutoStore product offers the flexibility to be deployed in nearly any type of building, high storage density, and low total cost of ownership (TCO), Hasler said.
AutoStore first announced its plans to open the facility in January, citing explosive growth in the U.S. market. Demand for AutoStore installations has been growing as retailers face growing e-commerce demand for fast delivery, at the same time that they are struggling to hire qualified laborers, he said. To meet that demand, many retailers are building DCs close to urban centers, and seeking automated material handling systems they can install in strip malls or converted brick and mortar stores, Hasler said.
Another reason for opening a U.S. facility is the company's broad, international footprint. AutoStore, which is headquartered in Norway and is owned by the Swedish private equity firm EQT Partners, manufactures its equipment at a factory in Poland. Opening a U.S. office will support greater communications with the firm's three sales partners, the systems integrators Bastian Solutions LLC (a unit of Toyota Industries Corp.), Dematic (a unit of Kion Group AG), and Swisslog (a division of Kuka Group).
AutoStore's business model is to act as an original equipment manufacturer (OEM) of its fulfillment equipment, while those partners handle all sales, installation, and support. That approach allows the company to reach a wide array of users, according to one of the partners who attended the event, Bill Leber, the director of sales for healthcare and pharma in Swisslog's warehouse and distribution solutions (WDS) Americas arm.
The "sweet spot" of the industry for an ideal application of an AutoStore system is a customer that has to handle a large number of stock keeping units (SKUs), demands piece picking for fulfillment, and needs to ship orders out of the DC within just a few hours, Leber said. Following that approach, Swisslog has sold dozens of AutoStore installations in the U.S., for customers including Indiana University's healthcare system, Johnson and Johnson, Medline, John Deere, and Boston Scientific, he said.
A coalition of freight transport and cargo handling organizations is calling on countries to honor their existing resolutions to report the results of national container inspection programs, and for the International Maritime Organization (IMO) to publish those results.
Those two steps would help improve safety in the carriage of goods by sea, according to the Cargo Integrity Group (CIG), which is a is a partnership of industry associations seeking to raise awareness and greater uptake of the IMO/ILO/UNECE Code of Practice for Packing of Cargo Transport Units (2014) – often referred to as CTU Code.
According to the Cargo Integrity Group, member governments of the IMO adopted resolutions more than 20 years ago agreeing to conduct routine inspections of freight containers and the cargoes packed in them. But less than 5% of 167 national administrations covered by the agreement are regularly submitting the results of their inspections to IMO in publicly available form.
The low numbers of reports means that insufficient data is available for IMO or industry to draw reliable conclusions, fundamentally undermining their efforts to improve the safety and sustainability of shipments by sea, CIG said.
Meanwhile, the dangers posed by poorly packed, mis-handled, or mis-declared containerized shipments has been demonstrated again recently in a series of fires and explosions aboard container ships. Whilst the precise circumstances of those incidents remain under investigation, the Cargo Integrity Group says it is concerned that measures already in place to help identify possible weaknesses are not being fully implemented and that opportunities for improving compliance standards are being missed.
Dexory’s robotic platform cruises warehouse aisles while scanning and counting the items stored inside, using a combination of autonomous mobile robots (AMRs), a tall mast equipped with sensors, and artificial intelligence (AI).
Along with the opening of the office, Dexory also announced that tech executive Kristen Shannon has joined the Company’s executive team to become Chief Operating Officer (COO), and will work out of Dexory’s main HQ in the United Kingdom.
“Businesses across the globe are looking at extracting more insights from their warehousing operations and this is where Dexory can rapidly help businesses unlock actionable data insights from the warehouse that help boost efficiencies across the board,” Andrei Danescu, CEO and Co-Founder of Dexory, said in a release. “After entering the US market, we’re excited to open new offices in Nashville and appoint Kristen to accelerate our scale, drive new levels of efficiency and reimagine supply chain operations.”
The deal will create a combination of two labor management system providers, delivering visibility into network performance, labor productivity, and profitability management at every level of a company’s operations, from the warehouse floor to the executive suite, Bellevue, Washington-based Easy Metrics said.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but Easy Metrics is backed by Nexa Equity, a San Francisco-based private equity firm. The combined company will serve over 550 facilities and provide its users with advanced strategic insights, such as facility benchmarking, forecasting, and cost-to-serve analysis by customer and process.
And more features are on the way. According to the firms, customers of both Easy Metrics and TZA will soon benefit from accelerated investments in product innovation. New functionalities set to roll out in 2025 and beyond will include advanced tools for managing customer profitability and AI-driven features to enhance operational decision-making, they said.
As retailers seek to cut the climbing costs of handling product returns, many are discovering that U.S. consumers shrink their spending when confronted with tighter returns policies, according to a report from Blue Yonder.
That finding comes from Scottsdale, Arizona-based Blue Yonder’s “2024 Consumer Retail Returns Survey,” a third-party study which collected responses from 1,000+ U.S. consumers in July.
The results show that 91% of those surveyed acknowledge that a lenient returns policy influences their buying decisions. Among them, Gen Z and Millennial purchasing decisions were most impacted, with 3 in 4 consumers stating that tighter returns policies deterred them from making purchases.
Of consumers who are aware of stricter returns policies, 69% state that tighter returns policies are deterring them from making purchases, which is up significantly from 59% in 2023. When asked about the tighter returns policies, 51% of survey respondents felt restrictions on returns are either inconvenient or unfair, versus just 37% saying they were fair and understandable.
“We're seeing that tighter returns policies are starting to deter consumers from making purchases, particularly among the Gen Z and Millennial generations," Tim Robinson, corporate vice president, Returns, Blue Yonder, said in a release. "Retailers have long acknowledged that they needed to tackle returns to reduce costs – the challenge now is to strike a balance between protecting their margins and maintaining a customer-friendly returns experience."
Retails have been rolling out the tighter policies because the returns process is so costly. In fact, many stores are now telling consumers to keep unwanted items to avoid the expensive and labor-intensive processes associated with shipping, sorting, and handling the goods. Almost three out of four consumers surveyed (72%) have been given this direction by a retailer.
Still, consumers say they need the opportunity to return their purchases. Consistent with last year’s survey, 75% of respondents cite the most common reason for returns is incorrect sizing. Other reasons cited by respondents include item damage at 68%, followed by changing one's mind or disliking the item (49%), and receiving the wrong product (47%).
One way retailers can meet that persistent demand is by deploying third-party returns services—such as a drop-off location or mailing service—the Blue Yonder survey showed. When asked what factors would make them use a third-party returns service, 62% of consumers said lower or no shipping fees, 60% cited the convenience of drop-off locations, 47% said faster refund processing, 39% cited assurance of hassle-free returns, and 38% said reliable tracking and confirmation of returned items.
“Where the goal is to mitigate the cost of returns, retailers should be looking for ways to do more than tightening their policies to reduce returns rates,” said Robinson. “Gathering data and automating intelligent decision-making for every return will bring costs down through more efficient transportation and reduced waste without impacting the customer experience. That data is also incredibly valuable to reduce returns rates, helping retailers to see the patterns of which items are returned, by which customer segments, and why; and to act accordingly.”
Based on a survey of 200 TIA members representing the diversity of the industry, 98% of respondents identified truckload as their most vulnerable mode. And those thieves are in search of three most commonly stolen goods—electronics, solar panels, and household goods—due to their high value and ease of resale.
Criminals commit those crimes through a variety of methods. The survey highlighted eight fraud types, including spoofing, unlawful brokerage scams, fictitious pickups, phishing, identity theft, email/virus, inbound phone calls, and text messages.
Stopping those thefts demands extra work from companies in the sector, as nearly 1 in 5 respondents indicated that they spend an entire day each quarter on fraud prevention, while 16% reported spending more than 4 hours a day, and 34% said they dedicate more than 2 hours a day to these efforts. This considerable time investment in monitoring, verifying, and responding to fraudulent activities diverts attention from other essential business operations, affecting overall productivity and increasing operational costs, TIA said.
In response, Alexandria, Virginia-based TIA also examined the critical steps the industry must take to protect itself from fraud schemes. "We are an industry under siege right now and we are not getting the support from government and law enforcement authorities to help us combat this scourge on the supply chain," Anne Reinke, president & CEO of TIA, said in a release. "When people think of fraud in the supply chain, they only see what is happening to a business, they are not seeing the trickle-down effect to consumers and economy. Fraud is a multimillion-dollar problem that needs to be addressed today."