Mark Solomon joined DC VELOCITY as senior editor in August 2008, and was promoted to his current position on January 1, 2015. He has spent more than 30 years in the transportation, logistics and supply chain management fields as a journalist and public relations professional. From 1989 to 1994, he worked in Washington as a reporter for the Journal of Commerce, covering the aviation and trucking industries, the Department of Transportation, Congress and the U.S. Supreme Court. Prior to that, he worked for Traffic World for seven years in a similar role. From 1994 to 2008, Mr. Solomon ran Media-Based Solutions, a public relations firm based in Atlanta. He graduated in 1978 with a B.A. in journalism from The American University in Washington, D.C.
Last year was a busy one for supply chain resiliency. That's unfortunate, because that meant a string of major disasters forced too many supply chains into costly reactive mode. Worldwide, total economic losses in 2017 due to natural and man-made disasters soared 63 percent to $306 billion, according to reinsurance firm Swiss Re. The U.S. was the hardest-hit region, posting $93 billion in losses mostly from a trio of devastating hurricanes during the late summer and fall.
For the supply chain, disasters are a fact of life, and will become a more expensive fact should incidents increase in frequency and severity, as many experts expect. However, as Aaron Parrott, specialist leader in Deloitte Consulting's supply chain and manufacturing operations practice, explains in a recent conversation with Mark B. Solomon, DC Velocity's executive editor-news, there are ways to mitigate the consequences, though not eliminate them.
Q: There were several high-profile disasters during 2017. Did last year's events move the needle in terms of getting businesses to be proactive about hardening their supply chains? Or are businesses still in a reactive mode and view this as a cost of doing business?
A: While 2017 was certainly a notable year for high-profile disasters, we're not seeing business leaders write big checks to overhaul their supply chains. For some companies in highly impacted regions, these disasters may have caused sudden ruptures in their supply chains and revealed unforeseen vulnerabilities. However, when it comes to building supply chain resiliency, we see most companies taking a piecemeal approach over a longer period.
Q: You stress the importance of pushing disaster planning and execution up the supply chain. Given that most large manufacturers have hundreds of suppliers around the world, can such resiliency be consistently achieved without prohibitive cost?
A: For many large manufacturers, 70 to 80 percent of their product value comes from the supply base. An unforeseen issue with just one critical supplier can jeopardize a manufacturer's entire operation and bring production to a standstill. For companies with complex and expansive supply chains, I recommend starting by focusing on the 15 to 20 percent of components and parts that are critical to continuing operations. This more limited focus will avoid incurring high costs while still ensuring continued production through challenging periods.
Securing resiliency can be achieved without prohibitive cost. In the past five years, the cost of implementation has decreased and ease-of-use for digital tools has increased significantly. This allows businesses to integrate cost-effective sensors and software packages to better collaborate with suppliers as well as enable blockchain solutions and data analytics software that can pinpoint and anticipate potential areas of concern.
Q: Beyond the obvious priority of ensuring the safety of employees, what should a company's to-do list be as it is developing a disaster-response plan?
A: A first step is to increase visibility into the supply chain. If your eyes are closed when disaster strikes, you'll end up fumbling in the dark and grasping for solutions.
This visibility requires mapping the supply chain—developing a multi-tier perspective to better understand the overall network. Next, manufacturers must strategically locate any areas where potential supply chain failures might occur. For example, a manufacturer might learn that all its suppliers for one specific component are located in a hurricane-prone area. Can production survive without these suppliers? Are there alternative suppliers that can diversify the components' availability and reduce risk? By answering these questions, manufacturers can more effectively pre-empt disaster-related challenges.
Finally, complex supply networks require advanced digital solutions, including the ability to track material movement, collaborate in real time, and integrate data across multiple systems and locations, along with data analytics to predict supply disruptions and identify current issues. These tools allow for multinodal communication, enabling instantaneous synchronization across the supply chain and providing manufacturers with complete end-to-end transparency. This real-time information, coupled with unfurled supply chain maps, can allow manufacturers to quickly recognize problems, identify solutions, and pursue preventive actions.
Q: What are the challenges in trying to build disaster plans across very long distances and many different cultures?
A: In today's business world, distance and cultural differences no longer tend to pose significant barriers. In fact, the global nature of business often provides significant value for companies that efficiently source through the most cost-effective supply chain networks. As previously mentioned, digital solutions are vital to securing supply chains, enabling manufacturers to maintain always-on agility. These capabilities are essential—not only for global supply chains, but also for national and regional supply chains.
However, companies that fail to maintain clear visibility into their supply chains may be unaware of supply chain issues occurring on the other side of the globe. End manufacturers may not learn of an issue for three or four weeks after a disaster takes place. Without up-to-the-minute information, companies lose the ability to respond effectively to real-time situations. By translating the physical world into the digital world, manufacturers can more accurately capture and analyze data, building resiliency against otherwise unpredictable situations.
Q: All the planning in the world may not help in the event of a sudden disaster and emergency, or if a storm changes its original course. Is there any way for companies to plan for the unforeseen, and if they can't cover all bases, what should they focus on?
A: Securing the 15 to 20 percent of your supply chain containing the most critical components to your products should be the first priority. But planning for the unforeseen requires building a comprehensive infrastructure around your supply chain. Digital technologies are crucial to gaining real-time insights. If components suddenly stop in transit, sensors and trackers can signal a manufacturer immediately and trigger an appropriate response.
Gaining visibility should also be a priority—not only for disaster planning, but also to maintain a competitive edge. Know where your components come from; learn who supplies your suppliers and establish a deep understanding of how your products come together. Building this bank of knowledge and enhancing it with digital insights enables a manufacturer to become more agile and proactive. This agility will not only prove invaluable in terms of disaster response, but also in allowing manufacturers to efficiently source components and boost revenues. Disasters and supply chain interruptions are going to happen, and they are impossible to avoid. Enabling these capabilities will allow companies to respond more quickly, make better decisions, and get their supply chain back up and running faster.
Q: How much traction has the control tower concept received as a proactive strategy?
A: As digital technologies continue driving supply chain resiliency, the most advanced control tower concepts allow for end-to-end transparency and enable a fully integrated network. This degree of visibility and connected information within the supply chain allows for proactive event management in disaster situations and even automated decision-making.
Establishing an advanced control tower to monitor the entire supply chain is the most holistic solution for building resiliency, but it's not necessary for every company. This concept is scalable and can be shaped to meet a range of companies' needs. Again, the control tower concept should not be understood as a one-time solution, but rather a foundation to build on. Start with the basics—increasing supply chain visibility—and scale up capabilities as needed to secure supply chain value.
Q: Can you briefly provide an example of a company that, in your view, does disaster planning right?
A: When the topic of supply chains enters mainstream conversation, it's usually because a company has failed to foresee potential vulnerabilities in the event of a disaster. Some companies were devastated by the previous natural disasters, like the 2011 earthquake in Japan, but have since become models of building progressive supply chain resiliency. Some have effectively navigated multiple earthquake tremors—relying on real-time data, predeveloped contingency plans, and strategic relationships with alternative suppliers.
In extreme disasters, it's virtually impossible to keep operations running at 100 percent, but with proper planning, business leaders can protect supply chain value as well as ensure the safety of their employees.
Q: What role does your organization play in supporting businesses in this area?
A: The tasks of mapping supply chains, identifying the proper digital tools, and developing strategic know-how can be daunting—especially for the world's biggest and most complex businesses. As a leader in building supply chain resiliency, Deloitte quickly bridges the gap between concept and implementation. From developing a strategy to initiating execution, Deloitte's capabilities can help businesses adopt scalable solutions that best meet their needs.
Building awareness of possible disruptions is half the battle. If one supplier is hit with disaster, do you have a backup supplier to fill the void? Do you maintain enough buffer inventory to cushion production during a supply shortage? How can you synchronize your internal and external data to derive real-time solutions? These are just a handful of the many questions companies must ask when building supply chain resiliency.
This story first appeared in the September/October issue of Supply Chain Xchange, a journal of thought leadership for the supply chain management profession and a sister publication to AGiLE Business Media & Events’' DC Velocity.
For the trucking industry, operational costs have become the most urgent issue of 2024, even more so than issues around driver shortages and driver retention. That’s because while demand has dropped and rates have plummeted, costs have risen significantly since 2022.
As reported by the American Transportation Research Institute (ATRI), every cost element has increased over the past two years, including diesel prices, insurance premiums, driver rates, and trailer and truck payments. Operating costs increased beyond $2.00 per mile for the first time ever in 2022. This trend continued in 2023, with the total marginal cost of operating a truck rising to $2.27 per mile, marking a new record-high cost. At the same time, the average spot rate for a dry van was $2.02 per mile, meaning that trucking companies would lose $0.25 per mile to haul a dry van load at spot rates.
These high costs have placed a significant burden on the operations of trucking companies, challenging their financial sustainability over the last two years. As a result, 2023 saw approximately 8,000 brokers and 88,000 trucking companies cease operations, including some marquee names, such as Yellow Corp. and Convoy, and decades-long businesses, such as Matheson Trucking and Arnold Transportation Services.
More so than ever before, trucking companies need to get better at efficiently using their assets and reducing operational costs. So, what is a trucking company to do? Technology is the answer! Given the nature of the problem, technology-led innovation will be critical to ensure companies can balance rising costs through efficient operations.
One technology that could be the answer to many of the trucking industry’s issues is the concept of digital twins. A digital twin is a virtual model of a real system and simulates the physical state and behavior of the real system. As the physical system changes state, the digital twin keeps up with the real-world changes and provides predictive and decision-making capabilities built on top of the digital model.
DHL, in a 2023 white paper, suggests that—due to the maturation of technologies such as the internet of things (IoT), cloud computing, artificial intelligence (AI), advanced software engineering paradigms, and virtual reality—digital twins have “come of age” and are now viable across multiple sectors, including transportation. We agree with this assessment and believe that digital twins are essential to radically improving the processes of fleet planning and dispatch.
THE NEED TO AUTOMATE
Outside of attaining procurement efficiencies, trucking companies can achieve lower costs by focusing on critical operational levers such as minimizing deadheads, reducing driver dwell time, and maximizing driver and asset utilization.
However, manual methods of planning and dispatch cannot optimally balance these levers to achieve efficiency and cost control. Even when planners work very hard and owners strive to improve processes, optimizing fleet planning is not a problem humans can solve routinely. Planning is a computationally intensive activity. To achieve fleet-level efficiencies, the planner has to consider all possible truck-to-load combinations in real time and solve for many operational constraints such as drivers’ hours of service, customer windows, and driver home time, to name just a few. These computations become even more complex when you add in the dynamic nature of real-world conditions such as trucks getting stuck in traffic or breaking down or orders getting delayed. This is not a task humans do best! For these sorts of tasks, technology has the upper hand.
When a company creates a digital twin of its trucking network, it has a real-time model that factors in truck locations, drivers’ hours of service, and loads being executed and planned. Planners can then use this digital model to assess possible decisions and select ones that increase asset utilization, improve customer and driver satisfaction, and lower costs.
For example, a digital twin of the network can offer significant insights and analysis on the state of the network, including exceptions such as delayed pickups and deliveries, unassigned loads, and trucks needing assignments. Backed by AI that takes business rules into account, digital twins can allow companies to optimize their fleet performance by finding the most efficient load assignments and dynamically adjusting in real time to changes in traffic patterns and weather, customer delays, truck issues, and so on.
With a digital twin, carriers can optimize the matching of assets, drivers, and freight. Typically, an investment in this innovative technology results in a 20%+ increase in productive miles per truck, while also improving driver pay and significantly decreasing driver churn. Drivers get paid by the miles they run, so when they run more, they are able to make more money, resulting in less need to chase the next job in search of better pay.
ADDITIONAL BENEFITS
Digital twins also combat deadheading, another source of driver dissatisfaction and cost inefficiencies. On average, over-the-road drivers spend 17%–20% of road miles driving empty. Using a digital twin, a company can search across several freight sources to find a load that perfectly matches the deadhead leg without impacting downstream commitments. These additional revenue miles will help drivers to maximize their earnings on the road and carriers to maximize their asset utilization and profitability.
The traditional manual dispatch planning model is becoming increasingly outdated—each planner and fleet manager tasked with overseeing 30 to 40 vehicles. Carriers try to manage this problem by dividing the fleet into manageable chunks, which results in cross-fleet inefficiencies. Such a system isn’t scalable. A digital twin acts as an equalizer for small and mid-sized fleets. It enables carriers to expand by venturing beyond the fixed routes and network they were forced to run out of fear of additional logistical complexity.
A digital twin can also give an organization the transparency and visibility it needs to find and fix inefficiencies. A successful carrier will leverage the technology to learn from the hitches in its operations. While this visibility is beneficial in its own right, it also provides the first step toward a seamless, digitized operation. “Digital revolution” is a buzzword frequently heard at transportation conferences. Yet not too many organizations are dedicated to digitizing their operations past the visibility stage. The end goal should be using decision-support systems to automate key elements of the system, thus freeing up planners from their daily rote tasks to focus on problems that only humans can solve.
Finally incorporating a digital twin can also help trucking companies work toward the broader trend of creating greener supply chains. Because they have lower deadhead and dwell times, trucking companies that have adopted a digital twin can be more attractive to shippers that are looking for more efficient operations that meet their environmental, social, and governance (ESG) goals.
THE FUTURE IS HERE
It is important to note that the benefits described here are not dreams for the future; digital twin technology is already here. In fact, choosing a digital twin can seem daunting because there are already a spectrum of options out there. First and foremost, an organization must ensure that the digital twin it selects aligns with both the goals and the scope of its operation.
Additionally, the ideal digital twin should:
Operate in near real time. A digital twin should be able to refresh as often as the network changes.
Be able to factor in specific customer delivery requirements as well as asset- and operator-specific constraints.
Be computationally efficient and comprehensive as it considers thousands of permutations in milliseconds. The digital twin should be able to reoptimize an entire fleet’s schedule of multi-day routes on the fly.
Before implementing a digital twin, carriers need to make sure that they have robust data management processes in place. Electronic logging devices (ELDs), customers’ tenders, billing, shipments, and so on are already inundating carriers with a glut of data. However, the manual nature of operations in many carriers leads to poor data quality. Carriers will need to invest in data management approaches to improve data quality to support the generation and use of high-fidelity digital twins. Otherwise, the digital twin will not be representative of reality and companies will run into an issue of “garbage in, garbage out.”
REINVENTION AND TRANSFORMATION
While data management is critical, change management through the ranks of dispatch operations is often a harder task. In fact, the largest roadblock carriers face when undergoing a digital transformation is the lack of willingness to change, not the technology itself. Many carriers cling to outmoded planning methods. Planners, used to operating based on well-worn business rules and tribal knowledge, could be wary of the technology and resistant to change. They may need to be assured that, while it is true that every trucking network is uniquely complex, digital twins can be set up to model the intricacies of their specific dispatch operations and drive value to the network. A significant amount of time and resources will need to be expended on change management. Otherwise even though trucking companies may invest in cutting-edge technology, they won't be able to fully capitalize on the added value it can provide.
As the truckload industry works through the current freight cycle, it is important to realize that change is inevitable. Carriers will need to reinvent their operations and invest in technologies to ride through the busts and booms of future freight cycles. Recent global events point to the many ways that wrenches can be thrown into global transportation networks, and the fact that such volatility is here to stay. Digital twins can provide companies with the visibility to navigate such changes. But above all, an operation that uses the digital twin to drive decisions can make customers and drivers happy, and help the carriers keep their heads above water during times such as now.
Regular online readers of DC Velocity and Supply Chain Xchange have probably noticed something new during the past few weeks. Our team has been working for months to produce shiny new websites that allow you to find the supply chain news and stories you need more easily.
It is always good for a media brand to undergo a refresh every once in a while. We certainly are not alone in retooling our websites; most of you likely go through that rather complex process every few years. But this was more than just your average refresh. We did it to take advantage of the most recent developments in artificial intelligence (AI).
Most of the AI work will take place behind the scenes. We will not, for instance, use AI to generate our stories. Those will still be written by our award-winning editorial team (I realize I’m biased, but I believe them to be the best in the business). Instead, we will be applying AI to things like graphics, search functions, and prioritizing relevant stories to make it easier for you to find the information you need along with related content.
We have also redesigned the websites’ layouts to make it quick and easy to find articles on specific topics. For example, content on DC Velocity’s new site is divided into five categories: material handling, robotics, transportation, technology, and supply chain services. We also offer a robust video section, including case histories, webcasts, and executive interviews, plus our weekly podcasts.
Over on the Supply Chain Xchange site, we have organized articles into categories that align with the traditional five phases of supply chain management: plan, procure, produce, move, and store. Plus, we added a “tech” category just to round it off. You can also find links to our videos, newsletters, podcasts, webcasts, blogs, and much more on the site.
Our mobile-app users will also notice some enhancements. An increasing number of you are receiving your daily supply chain news on your phones and tablets, so we have revamped our sites for optimal performance on those devices. For instance, you’ll find that related stories will appear right after the article you’re reading in case you want to delve further into the topic.
However you view us, you will find snappier headlines, more graphics and illustrations, and sites that are easier to navigate.
I would personally like to thank our management, IT department, and editors for their work in making this transition a reality. In our more than 20 years as a media company, this is our largest expansion into digital yet.
We hope you enjoy the experience.
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In this chart, the red and green bars represent Trucking Conditions Index for 2024. The blue line represents the Trucking Conditions Index for 2023. The index shows that while business conditions for trucking companies improved in August of 2024 versus July of 2024, they are still overall negative.
FTR’s Trucking Conditions Index improved in August to -1.39 from the reading of -5.59 in July. The Bloomington, Indiana-based firm forecasts that its TCI readings will remain mostly negative-to-neutral through the beginning of 2025.
“Trucking is en route to more favorable conditions next year, but the road remains bumpy as both freight volume and capacity utilization are still soft, keeping rates weak. Our forecasts continue to show the truck freight market starting to favor carriers modestly before the second quarter of next year,” Avery Vise, FTR’s vice president of trucking, said in a release.
The TCI tracks the changes representing five major conditions in the U.S. truck market: freight volumes, freight rates, fleet capacity, fuel prices, and financing costs. Combined into a single index, a positive score represents good, optimistic conditions, and a negative score shows the opposite.
A coalition of truckers is applauding the latest round of $30 million in federal funding to address what they call a “national truck parking crisis,” created when drivers face an imperative to pull over and stop when they cap out their hours of service, yet can seldom find a safe spot for their vehicle.
According to the White House, a total of 44 projects were selected in this round of funding, including projects that improve safety, mobility, and economic competitiveness, constructing major bridges, expanding port capacity, and redesigning interchanges. The money is the latest in a series of large infrastructure investments that have included nearly $12.8 billion in funding through the INFRA and Mega programs for 140 projects across 42 states, Washington D.C., and Puerto Rico. The money funds: 35 bridge projects, 18 port projects, 20 rail projects, and 85 highway improvement projects.
In a statement, the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association (OOIDA) said the federal funds would make a big difference in driver safety and transportation networks.
"Lack of safe truck parking has been a top concern of truckers for decades and as a truck driver, I can tell you firsthand that when truckers don’t have a safe place to park, we are put in a no-win situation. We must either continue to drive while fatigued or out of legal driving time, or park in an undesignated and unsafe location like the side of the road or abandoned lot,” OOIDA President Todd Spencer said in a release. “It forces truck drivers to make a choice between safety and following federal Hours-of-Service rules. OOIDA and the 150,000 small business truckers we represent thank Secretary Buttigieg and the Department for their increased focus on resolving an issue that has plagued our industry for decades.”
Robotic technology has been sweeping through warehouses nationwide as companies seek to automate repetitive tasks in a bid to speed operations and free up human labor for other activities. Many of those implementations have been focused on picking tasks, a trend driven largely by the need to fill accelerating e-commerce orders. But as the robotic-picking market matures and e-commerce growth levels off, the robotic revolution is shifting behind the picking lines, with many companies investing in pallet-handling robots as a way to keep efficiency gains coming.
“Earlier in this decade and the previous decade, we [saw] a lot of [material handling] transformation around e-commerce and the handling of goods to order,” explains Josh Kivenko, chief marketing officer and senior vice president at Vecna Robotics, which provides autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) for pallet handling and logistics operations. “Now we’re talking about pallets—moving material in bulk behind that line.”
Kivenko explains that whether items are being packaged and shipped directly to a customer’s home address or moved as finished goods to a shipping bay for store delivery, those items are first moved in bulk in some way, often by human hands and with human-operated equipment. He describes warehouses as chaotic environments in which humans move pallets and cartons in multiple ways—up and down, side to side, from receiving to storage, from storage to shipping, or via cross-docking. Automation can help bring order to that chaos.
“What we’re trying to do is relieve some of the pressure [on the] humans [doing] this work,” Kivenko says of companies that develop pallet-handling robotic technologies. “At the end of the day, we’re trying to automate some of those flows, relieve labor pressure, save costs, and keep the goods flowing.”
But automated pallet handling isn’t right for every situation, so it’s important to understand the warehouse conditions required and the protocols and best practices needed to make it a win. Here are some guidelines for applying pallet-handling robots and gaining the most from your investment.
FIRST, UNDERSTAND THE TECHNOLOGY
Pallet-handling robots fall into four general categories, explains Rich O’Connor, vice president of storage and automation for Raymond West Group, a business unit of lift truck manufacturer The Raymond Corp. They include:
Palletizing/depalletizing robots, which are used to load or unload items onto and off of pallets, usually with the use of a robotic arm for picking and placing. Today, these systems are being increasingly integrated with automated storage and retrieval systems (AS/RS) to further streamline pallet handling in the warehouse, O’Connor explains.
Autonomous guided vehicles (AGVs) and autonomous mobile robots (AMRs), which are used to transport pallets within the warehouse. Often outfitted with lift decks or conveyors, or designed to tug or tow items, these robots move pallets from point A to B within a facility. AGVs, which often follow a marked guide-path or wire in the floor, have been around for many years, but the advent of high-performance guidance and vision systems is allowing them more flexibility today, O’Connor says. AMRs are self-guided vehicles that use software and sensors to navigate their way through the warehouse.
Forklift AGVs and AMRs, which can move products both horizontally, from place to place, and vertically, into and out of storage racks. They come in various styles—including stackers, counterbalanced trucks, reach trucks, and even very narrow aisle (VNA) vehicles for use in densely packed warehouses. These vehicles are more complex than those used only for horizontal transport, O’Connor explains. They must be “highly integrated” into the facility’s warehouse management system (WMS) or warehouse execution system (WES) so that they know precisely where to retrieve and deliver pallets within the facility.
Robotic pallet shuttles, which move pallets into, out of, and within dense storage racking. The Raymond Corp. describes such a system as “a standalone, automated deep-lane pallet storage system that utilizes self-powered shuttle carriages to move pallets toward the back or front in a racking channel. Shuttles are motor driven and travel along rails within a storage lane.”
O’Connor and others say that no matter which of these technologies you’re investing in, it’s important to remember that they are all part of a larger system designed to optimize operations throughout the warehouse.
“The expanding role of all these different styles working together is what’s amazing today,” O’Connor says.
SECOND, ENSURE THE TECHNOLOGY IS A FIT
Kivenko, of Vecna, also emphasizes the importance of pallet-handling robots working in concert, particularly AMRs and AGVs.
“The magic isn’t just that the robots are autonomous and driving by themselves. The magic is multiple robots—when you have a [whole integrated] system [in place],” he says. “[It’s] how the fleet operates autonomously and optimizes itself for continuous improvement. That’s where the exponential gains are. [It’s] not just about automating what a worker does; it’s about automating a system.”
But you can’t install these systems in just any warehouse and expect magic. Kivenko and others point to certain conditions that enable the best robotic pallet-handling outcomes, especially when it comes to transportation-based and forklift-type AMRs and AGVs.
“The robots that I sell are large-load machines with very expensive technology,” Kivenko explains. “They move material, generally, in larger facilities. And in order for them to produce a return [on investment]—because that’s the name of the game here—they have to be higher-velocity facilities.”
He says pallet-handling robots work best in large facilities running multiple shifts, usually more than five days a week. Wider aisles allow the equipment to move more freely through the facility and at higher speeds, to optimize efficiency and productivity. Strong Wi-Fi networks and clean, dry environments also help keep equipment running at top performance.
O’Connor agrees that pallet-handling robots are best suited to facilities with multishift operations, where they can ease labor constraints and boost productivity. And he says many customers are willing to extend the typical two- to three-year ROI period to five years in order to achieve those gains. But there is even more to it than that. O’Connor’s colleague John Rosenberger says customers must first step back and analyze their processes to ensure that, even if they have the right facility for pallet-handling AMRs or AGVs, they are moving material in the most efficient way to begin with.
“Many times, we find that the processes in place [are inefficient],” says Rosenberger, who is director of iWarehouse Gateway and global telematics for The Raymond Corp. He emphasizes the importance of analyzing existing data—from an equipment telematics system or similar—to determine the best path toward automation.
“Do you have congestion zones now?” he asks. “They’ll still exist if you automate [those processes exactly].”
THIRD, MAKE SIMPLICITY A PRIORITY
Another basic rule of thumb when implementing pallet-handling robotics: Keep it simple.
Andy Lockhart, director of strategic engagement for global warehouse and logistics process automation company Vanderlande, says that when designing a pallet-handling robotics system, “you want to minimize the processes you [automate]. When you can create [an automated system] that focuses on one task—for example, AMRs delivering pallets from a high-bay [storage rack] directly to the palletizing cell—you can do that efficiently and effectively. When you ask the AMR to do this and this and this … you are adding risk of failure.”
Lockhart’s colleague Jake Heldenberg advises customers to first test their target processes via pilot programs within the warehouse or DC. Heldenberg is Vanderlande’s head of solution design, warehousing, North America.
“If AGVs or AMRs for pallet handling are interesting [to a customer], the best thing to do is pilot one or two in an existing DC,” he says, explaining that the process can help companies troubleshoot, understand integration timelines, and gauge ROI. But pilot programs can add expense to a project, making it unaffordable for some.
“If that’s the case, then the best advice is work with a vendor who has experience integrating [the technology],” Heldenberg says. “Use their experience to benefit your business. You won’t have the same hiccups and challenges you would with a less-experienced vendor.”