Luis Castaneda of Raymond Handling Concepts won MHI's Face of the Supply Chain award.

The warehousing and distribution industry demands much more creativity than most people realize. To promote awareness of the latest developments, the industry group MHI hands out Innovation Awards each year to companies that develop innovative manufacturing and supply chain products and services.

For the 2016 MHI Innovation Awards competition, a panel of judge picked the winners from a total of 98 innovations submitted by exhibitors at MHI's biannual Modex trade show. The winning entries were chosen for their innovation in creating quantifiable and sustainable results in terms of ROI, cost savings, and customer satisfaction. The following awards were handed out at the event:

• The Best New Innovation Award went to Fetch Robotics for its Follow Pick, an autonomous robot that follows employees through a warehouse, collecting picked items.
• The Best Innovation of an Existing Product honors went to Intelligrated Inc. for its Intellisort Cross-Belt - Dynamic Discharge Compensation, a cross-belt sorter that uses vision sensing and algorithms to avoid errors and jams.
• The Best IT Innovation Award went to RAM Mounting Systems for its IntelliSkin & GDS Technology, a protective device case and technology that simplify the frequent docking of mobile devices and allow DCs to use inexpensive consumer devices in logistics applications.

Read about the four finalists for each award.

MHI also named the inaugural winner of its "Face of the Supply Chain" campaign, intended to inspire next-generation workers to pursue manufacturing and supply chain careers. The 2016 winner was Luis Castaneda, a key account manager at Raymond Handling Concepts Corp., who won the honor with his entry titled "How the Supply Chain Saved My Life." For more stories and videos of unique individuals in the industry, check out the iWorkInTheSupplyChain blog.