DMLogic LLC, a warehouse management systems (WMS) software and implementation provider, has released the newest version of its software development platform. STEPLogic 6 will continue to offer customers the ability to easily configure, customize and enhance their existing WMS, and has now expanded its reporting and building structure while greatly enhancing the user experience including more intuitive search capabilities. STEPLogic facilitates the development of customer apps that are made easy by the utilities and automated tools built into the system.
STEPLogic 6's new features include:
Chart Builder, a graphical information system which enables customers to create personalized representations of operations data for visibility to performance;
Multiple language support, where users can personalize and display multiple languages based on user profiles;
Reports Scheduler, which enables users to combine personalized reports with email to route reports to pertinent staff; and
Intuitive search capabilities allowing users to locate data within the database faster and easier.
The core of STEPLogic is the Process Builder and the Screen Builder. The new release of STEPLogic 6 includes a multitude of enhancements to the functionality of both to further extend their capabilities and improve the user experience.
"The release of STEPLogic 6 takes our dynamic user interface and offers users an even higher level of reporting and process building," said Lynn Dermott, vice president, product development at DMLogic, said in a statement. "Giving the user an expanded process for performance visibility and reporting will allow for greater productivity and efficiency. And adding multiple language support will allow global companies to utilize the strength of STEPLogic's customization capabilities across the supply chain, again increasing visibility and overall performance."
STEPLogic's powerful software development platform was utilized to develop two new standalone products released in early 2017 which will also be enhanced with this new version.
STEPLogic Trace is a comprehensive, federally-compliant serialization solution that supports end-to-end tracking within the distribution center. In compliance with the Drug Supply Chain Safety Act, the product meets requirements that manufacturers, distributors and retailers must be able to track, trace and report on the movement of prescription drugs and medical devices, throughout the supply chain.
STEPLogic Warehouse is a feature-rich WMS designed and priced to support small to medium businesses. The first-of-its-kind, this app-based product enables users to fully customize their WMS by choosing core apps which can be modified or by building new apps quickly to meet business requirements. The complete suite of apps includes every step of traditional warehouse management system.
"With our enhanced user interface and graphic visualizer tool, the user has the ability to actually illustrate their new processes and easily capture messaging and reporting that will help reduce the time take to find inefficiencies in their warehouse," said Robert Kennedy, vice president, business development, DMLogic, in a statement released yesterday. "The enhancements to STEPLogic 6 are further extending the level of sophistication and power of the core solution but also our entire STEPLogic product suite will benefit from enhanced reporting and process building."
About the STEPLogic Software Development Platform
STEPLogic is a software development platform that automates development tasks, replacing them with configuration steps. The product provides the user with the tools to build decision tree navigation so users can enhance their current WMS to meet their specific needs, without changing the core code. User created dialogues can automatically update the appropriate tables and parameters and provide the user with recommendations. STEPLogic tracks, documents and catalogs customer specific SQL reports and provides user-friendly mapping of interfaces between host systems and the WMS. Able to be deployed on mobile devices, all transactions can be verified and existing processes replicated such as QA, packing instructions and cycle counts. The product can operate with any database system with multi-level security defined by the user. STEPLogic is able to be deployed on mobile devices, including most RF and voice devices, as well as any Android or Apple device. The product is designed to operate autonomously, or can be interactive with a WMS through the existing integration tools.
About DMLogic, LLC
DMLogic designs, installs and supports systems to manage the inventory and warehousing of a wide range of products. From prescription drugs to auto parts, DMLogic creates a flawless flow of identification, sorting, tracking, packing, shipping and validating. The DMLogic team of seasoned consultants, supply chain professionals and system designers represents a half century of experience in inventory management. DMLogic excels at process design, MHE and WMS, having created more than 200 WMS solutions alone at companies large and small. DMLogic has worked with the world's leading pharmaceutical manufacturers and distributors to provide rigorous and unparalleled validation of their inventory systems. DMLogic's solutions can be found in 15 countries and more than 27 companies. For more information, visit www.dmlogicllc.com.
The number of shipments of mobile robots will rise from 547,000 units in 2023 to 2.79 million by 2030, as customers expand applications from the current typical use case in warehousing and logistics to new tasks in manufacturing, last-mile delivery, agriculture, and healthcare, according to a report from technology analyst firm ABI.
That steep expansion would add up to a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 24.1% by units, and CAGR of 23.6% by revenue, as sales are forecasted to rise from $18 billion to $124 billion by 2030.
“Mobile robots are a very valuable category of robot which have completely transformed warehousing and logistics in recent years,” George Chowdhury, Robotics Industry Analyst at ABI Research, said in a release. “For material handling alone, mobile robots offer enterprises transformative efficiency improvements. Driven by the evolution of supporting technologies such as Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM), mobile robots can be deployed in diverse and dynamic environments, presenting new horizons to stakeholders and bringing efficiency improvements to under-automated economic sectors such as agriculture and healthcare.”
While warehousing and logistics will remain the primary adopters, other market verticals will see accelerated uptake by the decade's end, the report said. Shipments catering for agriculture deployments will rise from 7,000 to 129,000 per year by 2030; shipments for delivery will grow from 14,000 to 147,000; and public-facing applications will increase as the use of mobile robots within restaurants progress from 6,000 in 2023 to 78,000 shipments in 2030.
According to ABI, that change will occur as other industries begin to benefit from the decreasing costs, greater versatility, and simplified programmability that vendors are bringing to the mobile robot market. Sorted by market, those vendors include MiR, Omron, Otto Motors, and ABB for intralogistics within manufacturing; companies such as Zebra, Locus, and Safelog for marketing; Simbe and Brain Corp for retail; and Starship for last-mile delivery market.
“Mobile robots will remain the most popular form of robot, and shipments will continue to increase across economies as the benefits of augmenting existing business practices with automation become clear to decision-makers,” Chowdhury said. “As trust in Autonomous Mobile Robot (AMR) technologies grows, we will increasingly see mobile robots in public spaces. Hospitals, agriculture, retail stores, and last-mile delivery are all nearing readiness for the mass adoption of mobile robots.”
The launch is based on “Amazon Nova,” the company’s new generation of foundation models, the company said in a blog post. Data scientists use foundation models (FMs) to develop machine learning (ML) platforms more quickly than starting from scratch, allowing them to create artificial intelligence applications capable of performing a wide variety of general tasks, since they were trained on a broad spectrum of generalized data, Amazon says.
The new models are integrated with Amazon Bedrock, a managed service that makes FMs from AI companies and Amazon available for use through a single API. Using Amazon Bedrock, customers can experiment with and evaluate Amazon Nova models, as well as other FMs, to determine the best model for an application.
Calling the launch “the next step in our AI journey,” the company says Amazon Nova has the ability to process text, image, and video as prompts, so customers can use Amazon Nova-powered generative AI applications to understand videos, charts, and documents, or to generate videos and other multimedia content.
“Inside Amazon, we have about 1,000 Gen AI applications in motion, and we’ve had a bird’s-eye view of what application builders are still grappling with,” Rohit Prasad, SVP of Amazon Artificial General Intelligence, said in a release. “Our new Amazon Nova models are intended to help with these challenges for internal and external builders, and provide compelling intelligence and content generation while also delivering meaningful progress on latency, cost-effectiveness, customization, information grounding, and agentic capabilities.”
The new Amazon Nova models available in Amazon Bedrock include:
Amazon Nova Micro, a text-only model that delivers the lowest latency responses at very low cost.
Amazon Nova Lite, a very low-cost multimodal model that is lightning fast for processing image, video, and text inputs.
Amazon Nova Pro, a highly capable multimodal model with the best combination of accuracy, speed, and cost for a wide range of tasks.
Amazon Nova Premier, the most capable of Amazon’s multimodal models for complex reasoning tasks and for use as the best teacher for distilling custom models
Amazon Nova Canvas, a state-of-the-art image generation model.
Amazon Nova Reel, a state-of-the-art video generation model that can transform a single image input into a brief video with the prompt: dolly forward.
Retailers are under pressure from threats on two fronts heading into January as they frontload cargo imports in a bid to avoid the potential pain of a resumed East and Gulf coast dockworker strike and of broad tariffs being proposed by the incoming Trump administration, according to a report from the National Retail Federation (NRF) and Hackett Associates.
The report forecasts that the nation’s major container ports are expected to see a continued surge in imports through next spring, as importers rush to beat the impact of a container port strike as soon as January 15 and of tariff hikes as soon as January 20, researchers said.
“Either a strike or new tariffs would be a blow to the economy and retailers are doing what they can to avoid the impact of either for as long as they can,” NRF Vice President for Supply Chain and Customs Policy Jonathan Gold said in a release. “We hope that both can be avoided, but bringing in cargo early is a prudent step to mitigate the impact on our industry, consumers and the nation’s economy. We call on both parties at the ports to return to the table, get a deal done and avoid a strike. And we call on the incoming administration to use tariffs in a strategic manner rather than a broad-based approach impacting everyday consumer goods.”
By the numbers, U.S. ports covered by NRF and Hackett’s “Global Port Tracker” report handled 2.25 million twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs) in October, although the Port of Miami has yet to report final data. That was down 1.2% from September but up 9.3% year over year.
Ports have not yet reported November’s numbers, but Global Port Tracker projected the month at 2.17 million TEU, up 14.4% year over year. December is forecast at 2.14 million TEU, up 14.3% year over year. That would bring 2024 to 25.6 million TEU, up 14.8% from 2023. In comparison, before the October strike and November’s elections, November had been forecast at 1.91 million TEU and December at 1.88 million TEU, while the total for 2024 was forecast at 24.9 million TEU.
The report provides data and forecasts for the U.S. ports of Los Angeles/Long Beach, Oakland, Seattle and Tacoma on the West Coast; New York/New Jersey, Port of Virginia, Charleston, Savannah, Port Everglades, Miami and Jacksonville on the East Coast, and Houston on the Gulf Coast.
ONE commissioned its Alternative Marine Power (AMP) container at Ningbo Zhoushan Port Group (NZPG)’s terminal in China on December 4.
ONE has deployed similar devices for nearly a decade on the U.S. West Coast, but the trial marked the first time a vessel at a Chinese port used shore power through Lift-on/Lift-off operations of an AMP container, a proven approach to boosting cold ironing and reducing emissions while in port, ONE said.
“One approach to reduce carbon footprint is through shore power usage,” ONE Global Chief Officer, Hiroki Tsujii, said in a release. “Today we will introduce the utilization of a containerized AMP unit to support further reduction. The use of an AMP unit is a familiar and effective approach within this industry. To be successful, close cooperation among various concerned parties is necessary. We believe this will contribute to carbon footprint reduction in a practical and expedited way, and we hope it is a good symbol of collaboration among relevant parties.”
ONE provides container shipping services to over 120 countries through its fleet of over 240 vessels with a capacity exceeding 1.9 million TEUs. The company says it is committed to exploring innovative solutions to reduce its environmental impact, support the adoption of sustainable port operations, and contribute to a greener future for all.
Looking to get a better handle on your freight and transportation costs in the new year? It may be time to take a good, hard look at your packaging strategy and to consider switching from a standard approach to right-sized packaging, a process that utilizes automated, on-demand box creation.
Right-sizing solutions have been around for years, but experts say the industry is just now reaching a tipping point where value and savings can be seen in black and white—and where changes made inside the warehouse can make a big difference on the outside.
“Really, in the last year, we’ve been able to prove on paper—with historical data from freight companies, partners, and brokers—that the cost savings are substantial. More than we even thought,” says Brian Reinhart, chief revenue officer for right-sized packaging solutions provider Packsize. “We have tools that show that, on average, customers that right size will save somewhere between 20% and 30% within their freight operations as opposed to when they did not right-size.”
That’s a big number, and one that’s directly tied to shipping and transportation costs. Quite simply, by using the smallest possible box for an order, you can fit more orders on a pallet and in a truck, which reduces your freight burden, Reinhart adds. When combined with other benefits such as materials reduction and labor savings, right-sized packaging may finally be taking its place at the cost-reduction table.
Here are three ways right-sized packaging can make a difference in a company’s bottom line.
REDUCING MATERIALS USAGE
Right-sizing allows companies to reduce the amount of packaging materials they use by fitting the box to the order. That way, they’re not putting small items into a too-big box and filling the extra space with dunnage. Plus, it cuts down on the number and variety of boxes companies need to have on hand: Auto-boxing systems use a continuous cardboard material called fanfold, which is folded into a bale and cut to size for each order.
“Right-sized auto-boxing eliminates the need to store multiple box sizes and additional void-fill materials,” explains David Gray, senior vice president of sales for on-demand packaging supplier Sparck Technologies. “Switching from standard stock boxes to fanfold cardboard can reduce corrugate material usage by an average of 29% and material costs by an average of 38%.”
Those actions can also help reduce shipping fees.
“Carriers typically charge based on package size and weight,” Gray adds. “Automated right-sized packaging solutions prevent excess air or volume in boxes, making each shipment as compact and lightweight as possible.
“Even small weight reductions can drive significant savings in overall transportation costs. Choosing the smallest, safest packaging fit for each item is a crucial strategy for effectively managing rising shipping rates.”
TRIMMING TRANSPORTATION COSTS
Here’s another way to think about transportation savings: The more boxes you can fit on a truck, the fewer trucks you’ll need.
“[Right-sizing] also adds flexibility into the network planning and route optimization of those trucks,” Reinhart explains, noting that a truck with more orders on it can make more stops, eliminating the number of empty miles that truck has to travel.
“You want to spend time loading and unloading. Driving time is inefficient time. So the more products you can fit on the truck, the more efficient [you are].”
Gray agrees, adding that optimizing load capacity can also help companies meet sustainability targets.
“[Right-sizing your packaging] reduces the number of vehicles required, resulting in lower shipping costs and a smaller carbon footprint,” he says. “As companies prioritize sustainability and efficiency, right-sized packaging aligns with these goals, helping to streamline logistics while minimizing environmental impact.”
OPTIMIZING LABOR
Gray says automated fit-to-size packaging technology can reduce labor costs by an average of 88% and eliminate up to 20 packing stations. This helps alleviate the stress of finding warehouse labor, which is particularly challenging during peak periods.
Reinhart adds that right-sized packaging can help make other operations in the warehouse more efficient as well. He points to manual tasks using picking carts as an example. Many large distribution centers will have hundreds of workers pushing carts throughout the facility and picking items directly into boxes positioned on the carts. Right-sizing those boxes allows workers to fit 20% to 30% more onto the shipping cart, he says.
“Now, you can put 10 boxes on the cart, whereas before you could only put six or seven,” Reinhart explains. “So you need fewer operators.”
Those labor savings can, in turn, benefit other parts of the business.
“Since labor costs account for a significant portion of a warehouse’s budget, any reduction in these expenses can have a profound impact on a company’s bottom line,” Gray explains. “Lower labor costs mean increased profitability, which can be reinvested into the business to drive growth and innovation. By minimizing labor expenses, companies can offer customers more competitive pricing, leading to increased market share and customer loyalty.”
Those benefits are increasingly putting a spotlight on packaging—making it a critical area for cost-containment and cost-reduction strategies, according to Gray.
“By optimizing packaging sizes, companies can reduce waste, lower shipping expenses, and improve overall operational efficiency, making it a valuable focus area for managing rising costs,” he says.
Reinhart concurs.
“What we’re really seeing now is people looking for things you can do inside the warehouse to create value outside the warehouse—and that’s where right-sized packaging [fits in],” he says. “If you can create that [value], it becomes a no-brainer for the customer.”