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.
Recent leaps in technology have pushed prices for image-based code readers down in the last 18 months, making them price-competitive with laser scanners and expanding opportunities for data collection throughout the supply chain.
Logistics managers can eliminate inefficiencies if they take advantage of these price reductions to upgrade to two-dimensional (2-D) image-based technology from one-dimensional (1-D) data capture devices such as laser bar-code scanners, industry experts say. For instance, mounting cameras instead of lasers to conveyors will enable DC associates to examine the entire package—rather than just the bar code—as shipments flow past an inspection point. The ability to analyze that flood of new information can help ensure customer satisfaction and improve vendor compliance, reduce shipping costs, and minimize chargeback fees from supply chain partners.
"Laser scanners are equipped only for one dimension, but camera-based imagers can do much more," said Richa Gupta, a senior analyst for auto ID and data capture with VDC Research, a supply chain analyst firm in Natick, Mass.
"They are not restricted to a certain type of symbology; they can take images of the product itself, as well as getting information off the bar code and seeing information imprinted on the package," Gupta said. "There is no limit to the amount of information they can capture. That is the biggest value proposition."
The market has taken notice and pushed global sales of camera-based 2-D readers from $312 million in 2013 to an estimated $338 million in 2014 and $475 million in 2018, according to market research from VDC.
The predicted 8.9-percent rise in sales of image-based readers between 2014 and 2018 comes in sharp contrast to a forecast 3.1-percent decline for laser scanner sales over the same period, VDC says. Global sales of 1-D bar-code readers—including laser scanners and linear imagers—are projected to slump from $244 million in 2013 to $236 million in 2014 and just $208 million in 2018.
BAR CODES STILL A CRUCIAL INGREDIENT
To be sure, bar codes aren't going away. Industries in nearly every vertical category rely on the zebra-striped codes to keep up with the ever-increasing pace and complexity of inventory flow through warehouses and fulfillment centers and on to retail stores.
In past years, laser scanners were the technology of choice for that application, as they were the only devices with sufficient speed and depth of field to quickly and accurately read bar codes on packages as they whisked past fixed points on fast-moving conveyors.
But thanks to recent technology advances in processing power, digital image sensors, and onboard memory storage, image-based readers are finally catching up.
"Applications for reading bar codes at long range and [high] speed used to be highly dependent on laser scanning. But in the past 18 months, that dynamic has started to change," Gupta said. "Image-based scanners are now a very viable contender for any and all applications in distribution centers and warehousing."
Carter Control Systems in Frederick, Md., is one of those companies that have seen potential in camera-based readers. When the material handling systems integrator won a contract to design a new warehouse for a vitamin retailer, it had to draw up specifications for the conveyor, sortation, and manifest processing systems. Among other things, it needed to find an affordable automatic identification (auto ID) reader that could deliver near-100-percent read rates; handle line speeds of 30 packages per minute; and read codes on boxes, shipping labels, packing labels, and invoices. An image-based reader from Natick, Mass.-based Cognex Corp. fit all the requirements, said Marcus Lepage, Carter Controls' senior software engineer for application development. The integrator installed 18 of the units along the vitamin company's main conveyor line.
DATA DELIVERS BIG RETURNS
Speed and accuracy are important, but the greatest value in adopting image-based scanning comes in how you analyze the data. Users are quickly realizing they can do more things with camera-based sensor data than just achieve good read-rates, said Jim Anderson, national product manager for vision and 2-D code readers with Sick AG, the German sensor manufacturer.
By using software algorithms to analyze the torrents of data produced by image-based scanners, users can inspect every package on the line to validate its size, position, completeness, and dimensions, Anderson said.
That approach can deliver a quick return on investment (ROI) in several ways, including:
Reducing the incidence of mislabeled items by running optical character recognition (OCR) software on the image data to compare the information on a shipping label to the text on a package and make sure they match up.
Ensuring vendor compliance by identifying partners that ship high rates of packages with unreadable labels. Image-based sensors create data that can generate statistics showing the reasons for the problem, such as the position of each label relative to the box or the distance from a label to the corner.
Avoiding the chargeback fees often levied by carriers on shippers who attempt to tender packages with unreadable labels.
Achieving cost savings by using precise dimension data to stay ahead of the new dimensional weight fee structures imposed by carriers like FedEx and UPS.
BIG BENEFITS FROM DIGITAL IMAGES
Benefits of image-based code reading will continue to proliferate as computing systems gain processing horsepower. Eventually, they'll be able to intuit the objects they're inspecting without even relying on codes, said Robert Beideman, vice president of retail logistics at Datalogic, an auto ID and industrial automation equipment maker in Telford, Pa.
"What if your code reader could look at a box of Wheaties and it can't see a bar code, but it knows what a box of Wheaties looks like?" Beideman asked.
"There is a lot of power in an image," he said. "You can peel back the onion on business analytics, find pinch points in material handling systems, or identify parts of the building causing package damage."
Another way to wring extra value from images in a logistics operation is to give each customer a more customized experience, Beideman said. For example, in a dispute over damaged goods, a distribution center equipped with image-based code recognition technology could verify exactly when damage occurred to a specific package or even provide photographic evidence that the package was fine when it was shipped out to the customer.
ADVANCED ANALYTICS PAYS OFF
Improvements in vision tools could also allow users to gain business returns through software algorithms that identify problems in warehouse operations, said Matt Engle, director of ID products marketing and logistics at Cognex.
By using a camera-based system that can save information about packages as they roll by on a conveyor, customers can aggregate enough data to identify patterns and solutions.
"A laser can't save any info on the package as it goes by, but an image-based reader can. So we can automatically generate a classic continuous-improvement Pareto chart," Engle said, referring to a type of graph that illustrates the causes of different events. "Say, yesterday my read rates dropped. Let me go back and look at the data. It could be I need to train the new operator better, or maybe something is wrong with the label printing machine."
Whichever vendor they choose, logistics and DC professionals are using image-based technology to meet many needs in the warehouse. They can balance price, size, and speed to pick the best scanner for any given fulfillment center task, whether it's scanning outbound goods at a dock door, high-speed operation on a shoe sorter line, low-speed work on a print and apply line, zone routing with totes, pick and pack, or order fulfillment from storage.
Regardless of its place in the distribution center, a visual code reader can deliver savings and process improvements to help busy supply chain operations keep up with the speed of modern business.
The Port of Oakland has been awarded $50 million from the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Maritime Administration (MARAD) to modernize wharves and terminal infrastructure at its Outer Harbor facility, the port said today.
Those upgrades would enable the Outer Harbor to accommodate Ultra Large Container Vessels (ULCVs), which are now a regular part of the shipping fleet calling on West Coast ports. Each of these ships has a handling capacity of up to 24,000 TEUs (20-foot containers) but are currently restricted at portions of Oakland’s Outer Harbor by aging wharves which were originally designed for smaller ships.
According to the port, those changes will let it handle newer, larger vessels, which are more efficient, cost effective, and environmentally cleaner to operate than older ships. Specific investments for the project will include: wharf strengthening, structural repairs, replacing container crane rails, adding support piles, strengthening support beams, and replacing electrical bus bar system to accommodate larger ship-to-shore cranes.
The Florida logistics technology startup OneRail has raised $42 million in venture backing to lift the fulfillment software company its next level of growth, the company said today.
The “series C” round was led by Los Angeles-based Aliment Capital, with additional participation from new investors eGateway Capital and Florida Opportunity Fund, as well as current investors Arsenal Growth Equity, Piva Capital, Bullpen Capital, Las Olas Venture Capital, Chicago Ventures, Gaingels and Mana Ventures. According to OneRail, the funding comes amidst a challenging funding environment where venture capital funding in the logistics sector has seen a 90% decline over the past two years.
The latest infusion follows the firm’s $33 million Series B round in 2022, and its move earlier in 2024 to acquire the Vancouver, Canada-based company Orderbot, a provider of enterprise inventory and distributed order management (DOM) software.
Orlando-based OneRail says its omnichannel fulfillment solution pairs its OmniPoint cloud software with a logistics as a service platform and a real-time, connected network of 12 million drivers. The firm says that its OmniPointsoftware automates fulfillment orchestration and last mile logistics, intelligently selecting the right place to fulfill inventory from, the right shipping mode, and the right carrier to optimize every order.
“This new funding round enables us to deepen our decision logic upstream in the order process to help solve some of the acute challenges facing retailers and wholesalers, such as order sourcing logic defaulting to closest store to customer to fulfill inventory from, which leads to split orders, out-of-stocks, or worse, cancelled orders,” OneRail Founder and CEO Bill Catania said in a release. “OneRail has revolutionized that process with a dynamic fulfillment solution that quickly finds available inventory in full, from an array of stores or warehouses within a localized radius of the customer, to meet the delivery promise, which ultimately transforms the end-customer experience.”
Commercial fleet operators are steadily increasing their use of GPS fleet tracking, in-cab video solutions, and predictive analytics, driven by rising costs, evolving regulations, and competitive pressures, according to an industry report from Verizon Connect.
Those conclusions come from the company’s fifth annual “Fleet Technology Trends Report,” conducted in partnership with Bobit Business Media, and based on responses from 543 fleet management professionals.
The study showed that for five consecutive years, at least four out of five respondents have reported using at least one form of fleet technology, said Atlanta-based Verizon Connect, which provides fleet and mobile workforce management software platforms, embedded OEM hardware, and a connected vehicle device called Hum by Verizon.
The most commonly used of those technologies is GPS fleet tracking, with 69% of fleets across industries reporting its use, the survey showed. Of those users, 72% find it extremely or very beneficial, citing improved efficiency (62%) and a reduction in harsh driving/speeding events (49%).
Respondents also reported a focus on safety, with 57% of respondents citing improved driver safety as a key benefit of GPS fleet tracking. And 68% of users said in-cab video solutions are extremely or very beneficial. Together, those technologies help reduce distracted driving incidents, improve coaching sessions, and help reduce accident and insurance costs, Verizon Connect said.
Looking at the future, fleet management software is evolving to meet emerging challenges, including sustainability and electrification, the company said. "The findings from this year's Fleet Technology Trends Report highlight a strong commitment across industries to embracing fleet technology, with GPS tracking and in-cab video solutions consistently delivering measurable results,” Peter Mitchell, General Manager, Verizon Connect, said in a release. “As fleets face rising costs and increased regulatory pressures, these technologies are proving to be indispensable in helping organizations optimize their operations, reduce expenses, and navigate the path toward a more sustainable future.”
Businesses engaged in international trade face three major supply chain hurdles as they head into 2025: the disruptions caused by Chinese New Year (CNY), the looming threat of potential tariffs on foreign-made products that could be imposed by the incoming Trump Administration, and the unresolved contract negotiations between the International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA) and the U.S. Maritime Alliance (USMX), according to an analysis from trucking and logistics provider Averitt.
Each of those factors could lead to significant shipping delays, production slowdowns, and increased costs, Averitt said.
First, Chinese New Year 2025 begins on January 29, prompting factories across China and other regions to shut down for weeks, typically causing production to halt and freight demand to skyrocket. The ripple effects can range from increased shipping costs to extended lead times, disrupting even the most well-planned operations. To prepare for that event, shippers should place orders early, build inventory buffers, secure freight space in advance, diversify shipping modes, and communicate with logistics providers, Averitt said.
Second, new or increased tariffs on foreign-made goods could drive up the cost of imports, disrupt established supply chains, and create uncertainty in the marketplace. In turn, shippers may face freight rate volatility and capacity constraints as businesses rush to stockpile inventory ahead of tariff deadlines. To navigate these challenges, shippers should prepare advance shipments and inventory stockpiling, diversity sourcing, negotiate supplier agreements, explore domestic production, and leverage financial strategies.
Third, unresolved contract negotiations between the ILA and the USMX will come to a head by January 15, when the current contract expires. Labor action or strikes could cause severe disruptions at East and Gulf Coast ports, triggering widespread delays and bottlenecks across the supply chain. To prepare for the worst, shippers should adopt a similar strategy to the other potential January threats: collaborate early, secure freight, diversify supply chains, and monitor policy changes.
According to Averitt, companies can cushion the impact of all three challenges by deploying a seamless, end-to-end solution covering the entire path from customs clearance to final-mile delivery. That strategy can help businesses to store inventory closer to their customers, mitigate delays, and reduce costs associated with supply chain disruptions. And combined with proactive communication and real-time visibility tools, the approach allows companies to maintain control and keep their supply chains resilient in the face of global uncertainties, Averitt said.
Bloomington, Indiana-based FTR said its Trucking Conditions Index declined in September to -2.47 from -1.39 in August as weakness in the principal freight dynamics – freight rates, utilization, and volume – offset lower fuel costs and slightly less unfavorable financing costs.
Those negative numbers are nothing new—the TCI has been positive only twice – in May and June of this year – since April 2022, but the group’s current forecast still envisions consistently positive readings through at least a two-year forecast horizon.
“Aside from a near-term boost mostly related to falling diesel prices, we have not changed our Trucking Conditions Index forecast significantly in the wake of the election,” Avery Vise, FTR’s vice president of trucking, said in a release. “The outlook continues to be more favorable for carriers than what they have experienced for well over two years. Our analysis indicates gradual but steadily rising capacity utilization leading to stronger freight rates in 2025.”
But FTR said its forecast remains unchanged. “Just like everyone else, we’ll be watching closely to see exactly what trade and other economic policies are implemented and over what time frame. Some freight disruptions are likely due to tariffs and other factors, but it is not yet clear that those actions will do more than shift the timing of activity,” Vise said.
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 indicating the industry’s overall health, a positive score represents good, optimistic conditions while a negative score shows the inverse.