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.
Pandemic pressures are rapidly changing the face of the industrial robotics industry, leading users to accelerate the rollout of new robots and to promote tighter collaboration between different types of technologies and the logistics employees around them, according to the robotics industry trade group The Association for Advancing Automation (A3).
The evolution comes as businesses across many sectors are looking for strategies to cope with the pressures of the covid crisis, such as labor shortages, social distancing restrictions, and a jump in demand for e-commerce and other goods.
Those factors have accelerated several trends that would eventually have happened anyway, A3 President Jeff Burnstein said in an interview during the group’s annual Automate Forward virtual trade show today.
For example, equipment vendors in recent years had frequently complained about “pilot purgatory,” the trend for customers to run trials of robotic platforms without ever moving on to large scale adoptions. But that scenario has become less common during 2020, as more companies swiftly purchased automated systems to keep their supply chains running, he said.
In another change, he said large corporations have become more open to the idea of Robotics as a Service (RaaS), an approach where customers pay monthly fees on a subscription basis instead of buying their robots outright. In exchange, vendors deliver products such as autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) and then provide tech support, hardware and software upgrades, and other ongoing support.
To adapt to the shifting industry, A3 itself is reorganizing, announcing yesterday that on April 14 it will bring its multiple constituent groups under a single umbrella. On that date, the four A3 associations—the Robotic Industries Association (RIA), AIA (Advanced Vision + Imaging), Motion Control & Motor Association (MCMA), and A3 Mexico—will converge into a single hub. The new arrangement will retain the current “Association for Advancing Automation” name and website.
The new approach reflects the industry’s move toward merging those multiple technologies together.
“Customers don’t want to go to a robotics website to learn about robotics, then a machine vision website to learn about machine vision, and so on,” Burnstein said. “When you need a robot, you might also need it to be able to grasp and to have vision and to have motion. The commonality between them is so strong that we decided to go with a single website.”
Sometimes, all you need is the right partner to solve your logistics problems.
In 2021, global paint supplier Sherwin Williams faced driver and hazardous material (hazmat) capacity constraints: There simply weren’t enough hazmat drivers available in its fleet to maintain the company’s 90% fleet utilization rate expectations for key partner store deliveries while also meeting growing demand for service. Those challenges threatened to become even more acute in the future, as a competing paint supply company began to scale back its operations in the Pacific Northwest, leaving Sherwin Williams with an opportunity to fill the gap.
The paint supplier needed a logistics partner that could help it overcome the shortage of hazmat drivers while also helping to manage its West Coast trailer pools, out-of-region runs, and ad-hoc freight. It also needed a solution that would meet quarterly and annual fleet budgets.
SCALING UP
Enter ITS Logistics, a third-party logistics service provider (3PL) that offers supply chain solutions for drayage, network transportation, distribution, and fulfillment across North America. ITS proposed a combined owned-asset and asset-light approach that would provide Sherwin Williams with the equivalent of 21 additional drivers. The 3PL would leverage its carrier network to overcome the shortage of hazmat capacity while also certifying its own drivers via a three-month process. Further, ITS would help manage Sherwin Williams’ trailer pools and coordinate carriers, providing the paint company with a single point of contact for transportation.
The project would address cost concerns as well: “ITS Logistics aligned its solution with Sherwin Williams’ budgetary cadence and offered a quarterly business review to align on price structure, adding a level of transparency and trust to the relationship,” according to a case study the partners released earlier this year.
The companies soon sealed the deal and launched the program.
Not long after that, Sherwin Williams began to feel the effects of the anticipated challenges in the Pacific Northwest—but the company was prepared. When the competing paint supply company shuttered its operations, causing demand for Sherwin Williams’ products to spike, ITS injected a blend of owned trailers and carrier power to alleviate equipment challenges, cover all locations and regions, and help the paint supplier scale to meet volume.
CLOSING THE GAPS
The project has helped Sherwin Williams rapidly scale its capacity, meet fleet utilization requirements, manage trailer pools, coordinate carriers, and flex to meet spikes in regional demand.
And the results speak for themselves.
“ITS integrating themselves into our fleet was instrumental in helping increase our outbound volume by 18.4 million pounds [year over year] in the last seven months of 2023,” said Ted Taxon, regional transportation manager at Sherwin Williams, in the case study. “This equated to approximately 460 truckloads of extra freight, a large portion of which ITS [handled] on an ad-hoc basis with no operational constraints or quality issues.”
The partnership also helped Sherwin Williams maintain a 90% fleet utilization rate with big box retailers—an increase from less than 70% prior to the partnership’s launch.
The trucking industry faces a range of challenges these days, particularly when it comes to load planning—a resource-intensive task that often results in suboptimal decisions, unnecessary empty miles, late deliveries, and inefficient asset utilization. What’s more, delays in decision-making due to a lack of real-time insights can hinder operational efficiency, making cost management a constant struggle.
Truckload carrier Paper Transport Inc. (PTI) experienced this firsthand when the company sought to expand its over the-road (OTR), intermodal, and brokerage offerings to include dedicated fleet services for high-volume shippers—adding a layer of complexity to the business. The additional personnel required for such a move would be extremely costly, leading PTI to investigate technology solutions that could help close the gap.
Enter Freight Science and its intelligent decision-recommendation and automation platform.
PTI implemented Freight Science’s artificial intelligence (AI)-driven load planning optimization solution earlier this year, giving the carrier a high-tech advantage as it launched the new service.
“As PTI tried to diversify … we found that we needed a technological solution that would allow us to process [information] faster,” explains Jared Stedl, chief commercial officer for PTI, emphasizing the high volume of outbound shipments and unique freight characteristics of its targeted dedicated-fleet customers.
The Freight Science platform allowed PTI to apply its signature high-quality service to those needs, all while handling the daily challenges of managing drivers and navigating route disruptions.
STREAMLINING PROCESSES
Dedicated fleets face challenges that evolve from day to day and minute to minute, including truck breakdowns, drivers calling in sick, and rescheduled appointment times. PTI needed a tool that allowed for a real-time view of the fleet, ultimately enabling its team to adjust truck and driver allocation to meet those challenges.
The Freight Science solution filled the bill. The platform uses advanced analytics and algorithms to give carriers better visibility into operations while automating the decision-making process. By combining streaming data, a carrier’s transportation management system (TMS), machine learning, and decision science, the solution allows carriers to deploy their fleets more efficiently while accurately forecasting future needs, according to Freight Science.
In PTI’s case, Freight Science’s software integrates with the carrier’s TMS, real-time electronic logging device (ELD) data, and other external data, feeding an AI model that generates an optimized load plan for the planner.
“We’re an integrated data analytics company for trucking companies,” explains Matt Foster, Freight Science’s president and CEO. “We’re talking about AI.”
The benefits of the real-time data are difficult to overstate.
“We’ve been able to execute in the toughest of situations because we’ve got real, live data on how long each event is actually going to take and a system to aid and even automate the decision-making process,” says Chad Borley, PTI’s operations manager. “From what traffic patterns we are battling in the morning and evening with rush hour and things like that, to the impact of additional miles to a route, or even location-specific dwell times, it’s been a huge differentiator for us.”
REALIZING RESULTS
A case in point: the collapse of Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge in March. PTI was scheduled to go live with a new dedicated account in the area just days after the collapse, which would mean rerouting and the potential for longer transit times. Instead of recalculating based on assumptions or latent data, PTI was able to reroute freight based on real-time information and analytics to give the customer timely updates.
“With the bridge going out, that changed our ability to make as many turns a day as the customer would expect,” Stedl explains. “But one of the things Freight Science could do [was to] quickly [assess] how much of an impact that traffic would have [and] what the turns [would] be based on what’s happening on the ground.
“So we were able to go back to the customer and readjust expectations in a real way that made sense, using data. Now expectations can be reset¾we’re not asking for forgiveness when there’s no reason for it.”
The system’s advanced algorithms make load planning more cost-effective and scalable as well. The platform allows PTI to monitor trucks, trailers, and driver hours in real time, recommending additional loads with remaining driver hours that would otherwise be wasted.
And they’re doing it all with much less. Stedl says tasks that used to require five people and hours of work can now be accomplished by one person in mere minutes, improving productivity and profitability while reducing labor and operational costs.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but Aptean said the move will add new capabilities to its warehouse management and supply chain management offerings for manufacturers, wholesalers, distributors, retailers, and 3PLs. Aptean currently provides enterprise resource planning (ERP), transportation management systems (TMS), and product lifecycle management (PLM) platforms.
Founded in 1980 and headquartered in Durham, U.K., Indigo Software provides software designed for mid-market organizations, giving users real-time visibility and management from the initial receipt of stock all the way through to final dispatch of the finished product. That enables organizations to optimize an array of warehouse operations including receiving, storage, picking, packing, and shipping, the firm says.
Specific sectors served by Indigo Software include the food and beverage, fashion and apparel, fast moving consumer goods, automotive, manufacturing, 3PL, chemicals, and wholesale / distribution verticals.
Schneider says its FreightPower platform now offers owner-operators significantly more access to Schneider’s range of freight options. That can help drivers to generate revenue and strengthen their business through: increased access to freight, high drop and hook rates of over 95% of loads, and a trip planning feature that calculates road miles.
“Collaborating with owner-operators is an important component in the success of our business and the reliable service we can provide customers, which is why the network has grown tremendously in the last 25 years,” Schneider Senior Vice President and General Manager of Truckload and Mexico John Bozec said in a release. "We want to invest in tools that support owner-operators in running and growing their businesses. With Schneider FreightPower, they gain access to better load management, increasing their productivity and revenue potential.”
Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed, but Mode Global said it will now assume Jillamy's comprehensive logistics and freight management solutions, while Jillamy's warehousing, packaging and fulfillment services remain unchanged. Under the agreement, Mode Global will gain more than 200 employees and add facilities in Pennsylvania, Arizona, Florida, Texas, Illinois, South Carolina, Maryland, and Ontario to its existing national footprint.
Chalfont, Pennsylvania-based Jillamy calls itself a 3PL provider with expertise in international freight, intermodal, less than truckload (LTL), consolidation, over the road truckload, partials, expedited, and air freight.
"We are excited to welcome the Jillamy freight team into the Mode Global family," Lance Malesh, Mode’s president and CEO, said in a release. "This acquisition represents a significant step forward in our growth strategy and aligns perfectly with Mode's strategic vision to expand our footprint, ensuring we remain at the forefront of the logistics industry. Joining forces with Jillamy enhances our service portfolio and provides our clients with more comprehensive and efficient logistics solutions."