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.
Collecting boxes off a conveyor belt and stacking them neatly on a pallet can be boring, backbreaking work. So when robotic palletizers began to show up in warehouses some 15 years ago, their arrival was hailed as a way to free up human workers to handle more complex tasks around the DC.
Fast forward to 2015. The world of warehousing and distribution robotics is now on the verge of another big change, driven by advances in three of the enabling technologies that are necessary for a successful industrial robot deployment.
In recent years, engineers have improved robotic intelligence, providing sensors and data to drive more complex applications; robotic mobility, allowing robots to move to the appropriate location in a large warehouse; and robotic vision, using three-dimensional perception to locate specific objects in a cluttered environment.
Designers are taking advantage of these new tools to bring robots to parts of the logistics operation where they haven't been seen before.
Counting manufacturing as well as distribution, an estimated 236,000 robots are now in use at American factories, placing the U.S. second only to Japan in robot use. And that number is growing fast, according to the Robotic Industries Association (RIA).
A total of 22,427 robots valued at $1.3 billion were ordered from North American companies in the first nine months of 2015, a jump of 6 percent in units and 9 percent in dollars over the same period last year.
OFFLOADING THE "4D" JOBS
There's a platitude among engineers that the best applications for robots in the workplace are the "4D" jobs; tasks that are too dangerous, dull, dirty, or dumb for human laborers to perform efficiently.
That applies in the DC, too, where managers first brought robotic platforms like automated storage and retrieval systems (AS/RS) and automated guided vehicles (AGVs) into their operations to enable high-density storage and to help ease a worker shortage.
"(Items needed to fill orders) are getting moved to people, so people can concentrate on higher-level processes and value-add jobs," said Earl Wohlrab, robotic and palletizing systems manager for Intelligrated, a Cincinnati-based systems integrator. "There are lots of peripheral operations that people can be doing, aside from just pushing a cart around."
The trend will gather steam as labor becomes increasingly scarce and as the technology used in robotic systems advances, Wohlrab predicts. Still, there are many tasks where humans will always outperform robots.
"There's nothing better than a human picker," Wohlrab said. A human has no trouble distinguishing between items that are "the same object but a different flavor," he points out, but you can't make that assumption with machines. "That's intuitive to humans, but it needs to be taught to automated platforms."
CHANGING FACE OF ROBOTICS
That ability to handle variability in warehouse work is one of the features that distinguish a true robotic system from one that's merely automated. As part of a complex system, robots can add flexibility to automation, a crucial ingredient in the age of omnichannel fulfillment, said Jeremiah Miele, manager of research and development at Genco, a Pittsburgh-based third-party logistics specialist (3PL) recently acquired by FedEx.
Most warehouses were designed to pick and ship pallets and cases, but as the e-commerce revolution takes hold, retailers find themselves filling more and more orders for individual items or pieces. As a result, fulfillment centers today are handling a greater portion of small bins, bags, and boxes than they did in the past.
"(Robotic intelligence) is even more important in logistics than in manufacturing, because change is happening constantly, as opposed to maybe quarterly or annually," Miele said.
Given that reality, it's probably no surprise that designers at Genco are looking beyond the autonomous mobile robots of the type built by Kiva Systems (now known as Amazon Robotics) to more creative robotic platforms, such as indoor flying drones.
"We're really interested in drones right now; they have untapped potential as a platform for delivering robotic (capabilities) within a DC," Miele said. "There's also a very large enthusiast community to provide expertise. But we haven't seen them used before besides scanning buildings and yards. Drones are just a platform for mounting intelligence; with a vision system and enough time, we can build anything."
Another robotics firm experimenting with new platforms is Clearpath Robotics, a Kitchener, Ont.-based company that in September, unveiled a self-driving warehouse robot called Otto.
Designed for intelligent heavy-load transport in industrial environments, each Otto platform uses laser-based "lidar" scanning to sense and map a building floor, then uses onboard intelligence and cloud connectivity to operate in fleets ranging from eight or 12 mobile robots to potentially larger swarms of 50, 100, or more.
Like tiny Google self-driving cars, the pallet-shaped Otto robots can transport loads of up to 3,300 pounds and cruise at 4.5 mph. The system was recently chosen by GE for a warehouse pilot program, according to Simon Drexler, Clearpath's director of indoor industrial solutions.
ROBOTS WORKING ALONGSIDE HUMANS
As more robots take their place inside DCs, warehouse managers increasingly need to consider how the machines will fit in with their human associates.
"It's not always about labor displacement, but people using robotics as a tool, a force multiplier," said Genco's Miele. "People (are) continuing to do their jobs, but now they can have five or six robot friends helping them."
Standards for safely deploying robots in human environments are finally catching up with this trend, says Lew Manci, vice president for engineering at Crown Equipment Corp. in New Bremen, Ohio.
In January, the latest set of robotic safety guidelines, ANSI R15.06, went into effect. The engineering standards, which capped years of efforts to harmonize U.S. and European regulations, could open up new markets for industrial robots by clearing the way for robots to work alongside humans, Manci said.
Coming soon to a DC near you?
To see the future of robots in material handling and logistics operations, you need look no further than the engineering labs at Wynright Corp., a systems integrator with a robotic solutions division in Arlington, Texas. Wynright, a wholly owned subsidiary of Daifuku North America, has developed four robotic solutions for use in material handling/logistics operations. Currently undergoing pilot testing in customers' facilities, the systems are on track for rollout to a wider market within three to five years. They include:
A robotic container-unloading system. Targeted for use unloading trucks or ocean freight containers, these robots are designed to swiftly unpack floor-stacked products from a tightly packed space. Using data from the advance shipping notice (ASN), a robot compiles a list of boxes inside a container, including their dimensions. It then uses its 3-D vision system to locate each box, removing units until it has checked off every item on the list.
Compared with a worker with a pallet jack, the robotic system can do the job about twice as fast and without complications arising from extreme temperatures or heavy weights, says Tim Criswell, senior vice president for Wynright Robotic Solutions.
As a result, a human "wrangler" can now manage a fleet of four to six robots as they unload multiple containers simultaneously, with each container-unloading robot typically working alongside a robotic palletizer that collects and stacks the cargo.
These systems were enabled by recent advances in 3-D vision developed for use in videogame platforms like the Xbox, Criswell said. Gaming engineers created sophisticated vision technology that allows players to interact with virtual worlds through body movements and gestures. Commercial designers soon adopted that technology for industrial applications, developing swift algorithms and robust hardware that could survive deployment in a warehouse.
A robotic truck or container loader. These units are targeted to warehouse and DC operations that need to move bulk products between facilities (such as manufacturing and distribution sites). Taking the dimensions of the boxes and crates, the robot uses a space-planning algorithm to calculate exactly how many units it can floor-stack into a stable load inside a container. When the truck arrives at its destination, a container-unloading robot takes the entire stack apart and puts the cartons back on pallets for storage.
This system produces modest labor savings at the loading dock. Its greatest value is that it can fit 15 to 25 percent more product in each trailer than humans can when working under pressure to turn the truck around quickly, Criswell said.
A full-case order fulfillment robot. This unit is designed to replace the human element in a pick module, according to Wynright. Normally, humans pull items from multilevel rack storage and place them on a conveyor. This robot moves along a rail mounted in the aisle between racks, uses 3-D vision to locate specific boxes, matches them to a product list from an order management system, and moves them to the conveyor.
A robot that allows companies to handle mixed pallet loads. Dealing with mixed pallets is an increasingly common challenge as warehouses adopt just-in-time distribution strategies or pare down inventories as part of a Lean manufacturing initiative. This robot uses 3-D vision to locate boxes and scan labels on a pallet that may contain boxes of various sizes and shapes.
Warehouse automation vendor Locus Robotics marked the grand opening of its global headquarters facility in Wilmington, Mass., this week.
The state-of-the-art, 157,000 square-foot Locus Park facility “serves as the nexus for hundreds of Locus employees driving the company's mission to revolutionize global supply chains through advanced robotics solutions,” the company said in a statement Thursday.
The new headquarters boasts an expansive research and development, testing, and engineering space, and is home base to the firm’s nearly 200 New England area employees. The facility also handles all robotics manufacturing, shipping, and administration functions.
“Locus Park represents our commitment to innovation and our confidence in the future,” company CEO Rick Faulk said in the statement. “It's a launchpad for the next generation of robotics and AI solutions that will redefine warehouse efficiency and empower workforces worldwide. As we stand at the forefront of industrial automation, we're not just leading the industry but transforming it.”
Alongside the grand opening, Locus also celebrated surpassing four billion units picked across its customer deployments around the world.
Business leaders in the manufacturing and transportation sectors will increasingly turn to technology in 2025 to adapt to developments in a tricky economic environment, according to a report from Forrester.
That approach is needed because companies in asset-intensive industries like manufacturing and transportation quickly feel the pain when energy prices rise, raw materials are harder to access, or borrowing money for capital projects becomes more expensive, according to researcher Paul Miller, vice president and principal analyst at Forrester.
And all of those conditions arose in 2024, forcing leaders to focus even more than usual on managing costs and improving efficiency. Forrester’s latest forecast doesn’t anticipate any dramatic improvement in the global macroeconomic situation in 2025, but it does anticipate several ways that companies will adapt.
For 2025, Forrester predicts that:
over 25% of big last-mile service and delivery fleets in Europe will be electric. Across the continent, parcel delivery firms, utility companies, and local governments operating large fleets of small vans over relatively short distances see electrification as an opportunity to manage costs while lowering carbon emissions.
less than 5% of the robots entering factories and warehouses will walk. While industry coverage often focuses on two-legged robots, Forrester says the compelling use cases for those legs are less common — or obvious — than supporters suggest. The report says that those robots have a wow factor, but they may not have the best form factor for addressing industry’s dull, dirty, and dangerous tasks.
carmakers will make significant cuts to their digital divisions, admitting defeat after the industry invested billions of dollars in recent years to build the capability to design the connected and digital features installed in modern vehicles. Instead, the future of mobility will be underpinned by ecosystems of various technology providers, not necessarily reliant on the same large automaker that made the car itself.
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.
Keep ReadingShow less
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.