David Maloney has been a journalist for more than 35 years and is currently the group editorial director for DC Velocity and Supply Chain Quarterly magazines. In this role, he is responsible for the editorial content of both brands of Agile Business Media. Dave joined DC Velocity in April of 2004. Prior to that, he was a senior editor for Modern Materials Handling magazine. Dave also has extensive experience as a broadcast journalist. Before writing for supply chain publications, he was a journalist, television producer and director in Pittsburgh. Dave combines a background of reporting on logistics with his video production experience to bring new opportunities to DC Velocity readers, including web videos highlighting top distribution and logistics facilities, webcasts and other cross-media projects. He continues to live and work in the Pittsburgh area.
It’s been quite a while since we’ve had a large in-person material handling and logistics exhibition in North America. Due to the pandemic, last year’s ProMat show was virtual. The industry has not gathered in person since the last Modex show was held in March 2020, just as the pandemic was tightening its grip on the world.
Later this month, Modex rolls back into Atlanta. This trade show, put on by the industry association MHI, will feature more than 850 exhibitors showing off the latest and greatest systems and equipment for distribution, manufacturing, transportation, and warehousing.
The timing of this year’s show couldn’t be better. The pandemic has exposed the weaknesses in many of our supply chains. Adding labor is no longer a solution to keeping up with surging volumes, with employment numbers currently below 4% and too few workers to fill our industry’s needs.
Automation is one of the few ways to keep products flowing efficiently and on time. The accuracy and precise handling enabled by automated equipment also helps assure that the right products are picked and delivered damage-free. Supply chain leaders from across the country will be at Modex looking to ensure they have the right automated and non-automated tools to meet current and future needs in a fast-growing industry.
In addition to the opportunity to kick the tires on the latest equipment, attendees can choose from more than 100 seminars and four keynotes during the concurrent education conference. Among the topics covered will be automation, robotics, workforce management, manufacturing, sustainability, risk management, emerging technologies, transportation solutions, data management, and software solutions.
DC Velocity will be hosting a Transportation & Logistics Theater located in Hall C, where six leading providers of logistics solutions will present educational seminars.
We have robotics covered as well. Be sure to stop by the DC Velocity booth, B-6410, to catch our Robotics Forum, where more than a dozen developers of robotic solutions will discuss the deployment and advantages of automation and robotic systems.
If you can’t make it to Atlanta, be sure to check out our daily coverage, as our team of editors will be out in force to report on all the happenings at the conference and on the show floor. And if you’re into visuals, DC Velocity will produce videos highlighting top technologies and solutions displayed during the show.
It certainly will be good to get back together again. We hope to see you there.
Logistics real estate developer Prologis today named a new chief executive, saying the company’s current president, Dan Letter, will succeed CEO and co-founder Hamid Moghadam when he steps down in about a year.
After retiring on January 1, 2026, Moghadam will continue as San Francisco-based Prologis’ executive chairman, providing strategic guidance. According to the company, Moghadam co-founded Prologis’ predecessor, AMB Property Corporation, in 1983. Under his leadership, the company grew from a startup to a global leader, with a successful IPO in 1997 and its merger with ProLogis in 2011.
Letter has been with Prologis since 2004, and before being president served as global head of capital deployment, where he had responsibility for the company’s Investment Committee, deployment pipeline management, and multi-market portfolio acquisitions and dispositions.
Irving F. “Bud” Lyons, lead independent director for Prologis’ Board of Directors, said: “We are deeply grateful for Hamid’s transformative leadership. Hamid’s 40-plus-year tenure—starting as an entrepreneurial co-founder and evolving into the CEO of a major public company—is a rare achievement in today’s corporate world. We are confident that Dan is the right leader to guide Prologis in its next chapter, and this transition underscores the strength and continuity of our leadership team.”
The New York-based industrial artificial intelligence (AI) provider Augury has raised $75 million for its process optimization tools for manufacturers, in a deal that values the company at more than $1 billion, the firm said today.
According to Augury, its goal is deliver a new generation of AI solutions that provide the accuracy and reliability manufacturers need to make AI a trusted partner in every phase of the manufacturing process.
The “series F” venture capital round was led by Lightrock, with participation from several of Augury’s existing investors; Insight Partners, Eclipse, and Qumra Capital as well as Schneider Electric Ventures and Qualcomm Ventures. In addition to securing the new funding, Augury also said it has added Elan Greenberg as Chief Operating Officer.
“Augury is at the forefront of digitalizing equipment maintenance with AI-driven solutions that enhance cost efficiency, sustainability performance, and energy savings,” Ashish (Ash) Puri, Partner at Lightrock, said in a release. “Their predictive maintenance technology, boasting 99.9% failure detection accuracy and a 5-20x ROI when deployed at scale, significantly reduces downtime and energy consumption for its blue-chip clients globally, offering a compelling value proposition.”
The money supports the firm’s approach of "Hybrid Autonomous Mobile Robotics (Hybrid AMRs)," which integrate the intelligence of "Autonomous Mobile Robots (AMRs)" with the precision and structure of "Automated Guided Vehicles (AGVs)."
According to Anscer, it supports the acceleration to Industry 4.0 by ensuring that its autonomous solutions seamlessly integrate with customers’ existing infrastructures to help transform material handling and warehouse automation.
Leading the new U.S. office will be Mark Messina, who was named this week as Anscer’s Managing Director & CEO, Americas. He has been tasked with leading the firm’s expansion by bringing its automation solutions to industries such as manufacturing, logistics, retail, food & beverage, and third-party logistics (3PL).
Supply chains continue to deal with a growing volume of returns following the holiday peak season, and 2024 was no exception. Recent survey data from product information management technology company Akeneo showed that 65% of shoppers made holiday returns this year, with most reporting that their experience played a large role in their reason for doing so.
The survey—which included information from more than 1,000 U.S. consumers gathered in January—provides insight into the main reasons consumers return products, generational differences in return and online shopping behaviors, and the steadily growing influence that sustainability has on consumers.
Among the results, 62% of consumers said that having more accurate product information upfront would reduce their likelihood of making a return, and 59% said they had made a return specifically because the online product description was misleading or inaccurate.
And when it comes to making those returns, 65% of respondents said they would prefer to return in-store, if possible, followed by 22% who said they prefer to ship products back.
“This indicates that consumers are gravitating toward the most sustainable option by reducing additional shipping,” the survey authors said in a statement announcing the findings, adding that 68% of respondents said they are aware of the environmental impact of returns, and 39% said the environmental impact factors into their decision to make a return or exchange.
The authors also said that investing in the product experience and providing reliable product data can help brands reduce returns, increase loyalty, and provide the best customer experience possible alongside profitability.
When asked what products they return the most, 60% of respondents said clothing items. Sizing issues were the number one reason for those returns (58%) followed by conflicting or lack of customer reviews (35%). In addition, 34% cited misleading product images and 29% pointed to inaccurate product information online as reasons for returning items.
More than 60% of respondents said that having more reliable information would reduce the likelihood of making a return.
“Whether customers are shopping directly from a brand website or on the hundreds of e-commerce marketplaces available today [such as Amazon, Walmart, etc.] the product experience must remain consistent, complete and accurate to instill brand trust and loyalty,” the authors said.
When you get the chance to automate your distribution center, take it.
That's exactly what leaders at interior design house
Thibaut Design did when they relocated operations from two New Jersey distribution centers (DCs) into a single facility in Charlotte, North Carolina, in 2019. Moving to an "empty shell of a building," as Thibaut's Michael Fechter describes it, was the perfect time to switch from a manual picking system to an automated one—in this case, one that would be driven by voice-directed technology.
"We were 100% paper-based picking in New Jersey," Fechter, the company's vice president of distribution and technology, explained in a
case study published by Voxware last year. "We knew there was a need for automation, and when we moved to Charlotte, we wanted to implement that technology."
Fechter cites Voxware's promise of simple and easy integration, configuration, use, and training as some of the key reasons Thibaut's leaders chose the system. Since implementing the voice technology, the company has streamlined its fulfillment process and can onboard and cross-train warehouse employees in a fraction of the time it used to take back in New Jersey.
And the results speak for themselves.
"We've seen incredible gains [from a] productivity standpoint," Fechter reports. "A 50% increase from pre-implementation to today."
THE NEED FOR SPEED
Thibaut was founded in 1886 and is the oldest operating wallpaper company in the United States, according to Fechter. The company works with a global network of designers, shipping samples of wallpaper and fabrics around the world.
For the design house's warehouse associates, picking, packing, and shipping thousands of samples every day was a cumbersome, labor-intensive process—and one that was prone to inaccuracy. With its paper-based picking system, mispicks were common—Fechter cites a 2% to 5% mispick rate—which necessitated stationing an extra associate at each pack station to check that orders were accurate before they left the facility.
All that has changed since implementing Voxware's Voice Management Suite (VMS) at the Charlotte DC. The system automates the workflow and guides associates through the picking process via a headset, using voice commands. The hands-free, eyes-free solution allows workers to focus on locating and selecting the right item, with no paper-based lists to check or written instructions to follow.
Thibaut also uses the tech provider's analytics tool, VoxPilot, to monitor work progress, check orders, and keep track of incoming work—managers can see what orders are open, what's in process, and what's completed for the day, for example. And it uses VoxTempo, the system's natural language voice recognition (NLVR) solution, to streamline training. The intuitive app whittles training time down to minutes and gets associates up and working fast—and Thibaut hitting minimum productivity targets within hours, according to Fechter.
EXPECTED RESULTS REALIZED
Key benefits of the project include a reduction in mispicks—which have dropped to zero—and the elimination of those extra quality-control measures Thibaut needed in the New Jersey DCs.
"We've gotten to the point where we don't even measure mispicks today—because there are none," Fechter said in the case study. "Having an extra person at a pack station to [check] every order before we pack [it]—that's been eliminated. Not only is the pick right the first time, but [the order] also gets packed and shipped faster than ever before."
The system has increased inventory accuracy as well. According to Fechter, it's now "well over 99.9%."