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.
Simbe's robots cruise the aisles of brick and mortar stores, dodging shoppers and discarded merchandise as they use radio frequency identification (RFID), computer vision, and other sensors to conduct accurate inventory checks around the clock.
The latest rollout brings this autonomous inventory robot to Decathlon's inaugural U.S. store, in downtown San Francisco. Decathlon opened its first store in Lille, France, in 1976 and says it has since expanded to become the world's largest sporting goods retailer, operating over 1,414 stores in 45 countries across the globe and designing its own brands.
In addition to establishing a toehold in the North American market, the site operates as a "lab store" where Decathlon can test new technologies, practice product development, and evolve in-store experiences, the company says. San Francisco-based Simbe says it will contribute to that plan by freeing store employees to focus on customer service while the Tally robots perform inventory audits and cycle counts, give alerts of low-inventory goods, flag misplaced items, and conduct visual audits of merchandise to enable inventory layout optimization.
Each bot conducts precise, daily inventory counts and provides precise location information for products, since shoppers in retail environments often pick up clothing and equipment and then replace them on the wrong shelf, Simbe Robotics CEO Brad Bogolea said in a briefing.
That job description covers more than 10,000 products tagged with RFID in a typical Decathlon store, a process that would take human employees many hours to complete. The San Francisco site has been using its Tally bot during normal shopping hours for over a year now, as part of Decathlon's efforts to design their own retail technology infrastructure for digital supply chain operations, Bogolea said.
"Decathlon's uniquely designed San Francisco flagship store is an environment that fosters significant interaction between customers, product, and store associates; with that comes unique merchandising challenges," Bogolea said in a release. "Decathlon has deployed Tally in a uniquely customer-centric environment, leveraging Tally's RFID capabilities to capture real-time insight into product flow, pricing, and availability by providing precise inventory audits and cycle counts, in addition to sharing the location of each product in store."
Toyota Material Handling and its nationwide network of dealers showcased their commitment to improving their local communities during the company’s annual “Lift the Community Day.” Since 2021, Toyota associates have participated in an annual day-long philanthropic event held near Toyota’s Columbus, Indiana, headquarters. This year, the initiative expanded to include participation from Toyota’s dealers, increasing the impact on communities throughout the U.S. A total of 324 Toyota associates completed 2,300 hours of community service during this year’s event.
The PMMI Foundation, the charitable arm of PMMI, The Association for Packaging and Processing Technologies, awarded nearly $200,000 in scholarships to students pursuing careers in the packaging and processing industry. Each year, the PMMI Foundation provides academic scholarships to students studying packaging, food processing, and engineering to underscore its commitment to the future of the packaging and processing industry.
Truck leasing and fleet management services provider Fleet Advantage hosted its “Kids Around the Corner Foundation” back-to-school backpack drive in July. During the event, company associates assembled 200 backpacks filled with essential school supplies for high school-age students. The backpacks were then delivered to Henderson Behavioral Health’s Youth & Family Services location in Tamarac, Florida.
For the past seven years, third-party logistics service specialist ODW Logistics has provided logistics support for the Pelotonia Ride Weekend, a campaign to raise funds for cancer research at The Ohio State University’s Comprehensive Cancer Center–Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital and Richard J. Solove Research Institute. As in the past, ODW provided inventory management services and transportation for the riders’ bicycles at this year’s event. In all, some 7,000 riders and 3,000 volunteers participated in the ride weekend.
After years in the military, service members and their spouses can find the transition to civilian life difficult. For many, a valuable support on that journey is the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) SkillBridge program. During their final 180 days of service, participants in the program are connected with companies that provide them with civilian work experience and training. There is no cost to those companies while the service member continues receiving military compensation and benefits.
Both sides benefit from the program. “We’re proud to work with SkillBridge to give back to our military veterans for the bravery and sacrifices they’ve made for all of us,” Troy Pederson, director of training and development at LiftOne, a Hyster-Yale dealer and established SkillBridge employer, said in a release. “In the last year, we’ve helped 10 SkillBridge interns transition from military to civilian life, and the value and positive impact of the program can’t be overstated. At LiftOne, we’ve gained so much from the experience and diverse mix of technical and leadership skills of our SkillBridge candidates.”
Raise your hand if you think you’re a pretty good driver. Now put your hand back down, because we’re about to introduce you to someone who has set the bar much higher than you can ever dream of reaching.
Meet Greg Swift, a longtime driver for Schneider National Inc. who has driven 5 million miles without a preventable accident. The Green Bay, Wisconsin-based carrier boasts a notable safety record: More than 6,500 of its drivers have traveled at least 1 million safe driving miles with the company. Swift, however, stands out from that crowd, joining only two other drivers in Schneider’s nearly 90-year history in reaching the 5 million-mile mark.
Swift’s achievement was recognized with a parade, a “Sound the Horn” celebration—a long-standing tradition of sounding a truck horn inside the headquarters building to celebrate achievements—and a $10,000 bonus.
And if you’re wondering how long it takes to motor 5 million miles, that’s the equivalent of driving to the moon and back 10 times. Swift began that odyssey 33 years ago when he started his career with Schneider after leaving his teaching job. He now runs a dedicated route for Schneider customer Georgia-Pacific.
In his time as a driver, Swift has witnessed the evolution of trucking technology from paper maps to advanced GPS and collision-mitigation systems, but his advice to new drivers is simple and technology-free: Plan ahead and manage your time efficiently.
Look around any distribution center and you’ll see dozens of devices powered by batteries. They range from large-scale cells in electric forklifts, to mid-size units in autonomous mobile robots (AMRs), to slim, palm-size batteries in barcode scanners and smartphones. Despite the ubiquity of these applications, there is more work to be done. That’s why a battery-industry group has launched an initiative it hopes will encourage the next generation of engineers to continue developing smaller, safer, more powerful industrial batteries.
The effort is funded by donations from BCI member companies, including the lead donors Entek and Daramic, as well as gifts from more than a dozen other companies, including such distribution center stalwarts as Crown Battery, East Penn, and EnerSys.
Logistics service providers looking to cut emissions from their transportation operations have largely focused on the switch from internal combustion engines to battery electric vehicles (BEVs). But some proponents say that hydrogen fuel cells are a better way to generate the electricity required to reach that goal. A new demonstration project now underway is designed to prove their point.
The FCEV began real-world testing on routes in the San Francisco Bay Area in August. Over the next few months, the truck will head down to the Los Angeles area before making its way to northern California and then to western Canada.
Those tests follow similar demos in Australia as well as a July trial of Hyzon’s Class 8 FCEV tractor-trailer with some of its North American fleet customers, which include waste haulers. According to Hyzon, those tests showed that hydrogen fuel-cell technology is a viable replacement for heavy-duty diesel engines and can overcome some of the inherent challenges associated with other zero-emission technologies, such as fluctuations in operating temperatures, payload limitations, and short ranges (the company says its hydrogen fuel cells provide the refuse-collection trucks with reliable power for up to 125 miles).