When you're talking about equipment and machines, sometimes even the best description falls short in helping you visualize what it does. Luckily, DC Velocity stopped by some of the booths to shoot video of the machinery in action and speak with the vendors about their products.
In addition, our editors sat down each day to discuss major events from each day of the show as well as trends they noticed on the show floor. A few takeaways:
- Investments in supply chain technology are exploding. Roughly half of respondents to MHI's Annual Industry Report survey plan to spend more than $5 million over the next two years.
- With all this technology comes a need for power, and this has resulted in a proliferation of lithium ion batteries. They've become commonplace.
- Everyone was talking talent. A shortage of labor—at every level, from the dock door on up—is helping to drive the automation investments.
- In the future, you might charge your lift truck as you drive it. Enersys is testing wireless charging technology, which would allow a forklift to charge simply by parking the truck on a pad, much as you place your cell phones and devices on a charge pad. Eventually, it may be possible to put those pads in warehouse aisles so that trucks could charge as they drove through.
- Robots are able to power other warehouse devices, such as label printers. A robot is "just one big rolling battery," said DCV Senior Editor Ben Ames. Users can plug in different devices in a LEGO-like manner.
Watch the videos below, and we can almost guarantee you'll come away just a little bit smarter.
