The Roboverse: Supply Chain Edition
The Materials Handling Industry ( MHI) organized the first National Material Handling Show back in 1948. The first show took place in Cleveland, with approximately 3,000 attendees and covering 60,000 square feet. The first MODEX show, a descendant of that original National Material Handling Show launched 10 years ago. Last week’s MODEX had over 37,000 visitors (20% more visitors than the last pre-pandemic show) and over 800 exhibitors across +400,000 square feet at Atlanta’s Georgia World Congress Center.
In the past decade, the composition of the MODEX show has changed dramatically. This year, the focus was on digital supply chain solutions and robots stole the show. The biggest, most highly trafficked booths were all robotics related. While not an official estimate, it felt to me like 2/3rds of the real estate at the show was occupied by robotics companies. Even with a large number of exhibitors, this was only a sampling of all the robots available.
Anyone who hasn’t attended one of these shows in a while — or ever — may be wondering what these robots do or what they look like. Follow along for a tour of the supply chain & logistics roboverse.
Moving pallets
The supply chain is primarily about moving things from production to the point of consumption. There are often many stops along the way, and one of the most efficient ways to move things is stacked on top of a platform, called a pallet. Pallets come in many different shapes, sizes, and types; in North America, the 48" x 40" pallets were popularized and standardized by the Grocery Manufacturers of America (GMA). It is estimated that there are roughly 5 billion pallets in use worldwide — 2 billion in the U.S. alone.
Traditionally, these pallets were moved by forklifts or tugs pulling one or more carts, driven by qualified operators. Due to labor shortages and a need for greater efficiency, forklifts and tugs are increasingly automated, while large autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) with capacity for 1500 kilograms (3,300 lbs.) can also carry palletized goods.
Examples at Modex included Seegrid, Otto and Vecna, all of which introduced vertical lift robots, as well as many others like Raymond and Jungheinrich. More specialized robots with dedicated tasks are also entering the market, such as Fox Robotics, which uses autonomous forklifts for trailer unloading.
Moving items
At the other end of the distribution chain, there are individual items — or “eaches” in supply chain parlance. When you place an e-commerce order, the various items, which might be stored throughout the distribution center, have to be picked, packed and shipped. Picking can be done by warehouse associates and/or robots (see next section), but regardless they need to be moved around the warehouse.
Conveyor belts have historically been used for this, but they are fixed infrastructure that can’t be easily reconfigured. In other cases, this was handled by an associate, manually picking items from shelves, stacking items on a cart and pushing it around the warehouse all the way to the packing area, which was known as “the long walk”.
Now, picture a cart that can drive itself autonomously. It also has connection to the Warehouse Management System, so it knows where everything is and where it needs to go. Now people can stick around in a specific area or spot, and the robot comes to them. In the case of goods-to-person systems, the shelves themselves are moved around by robots. This creates significant efficiencies, and also saves associates from having to walk 10 miles a day within the warehouse.
Several companies exhibiting at Modex, such as Locus, Fetch (now part of Zebra), inVia, Geek+ and 6 River Systems (acquired by Shopify), offer solutions to address these needs.
Pick and place/pack
A human faced with a bin full of assorted items would have no problems identifying, let’s say, a bottle of ketchup and a t-shirt, picking them up one at a time and putting each one in a box or soft plastic bag for shipping. However, this is is incredibly challenging to automate. The challenge isn’t just one of gripping items, but understanding what an item is and defining the optimal plan for picking each item.
Industrial robot arms have been used for decades in manufacturing, but it’s only in recent years that various technologies, including mobile computing, cameras and computer vision systems, converged to make these robot arms smart enough to pick items on their own.
This was one of the biggest innovations at this year’s MODEX: a number of solutions, from established companies like FANUC to startups like Ambi, Kindred and RightHand Robotics, were on display and are being rolled out in production.
Micro-fulfillment
What do you get if you cross a warehouse with a retail store? Micro-fulfillment solutions help turn stores that are typically close to consumers in urban/suburban areas into scaled down distribution centers. This can be used to enable BOPiS (buy online, pick up in store), last-mile delivery with autonomous robots and other emerging solutions.
Due to the smaller footprint, micro-fulfillment solutions must focus on item density, so robots typically operate along all 3 dimensions. It is fascinating to watch solutions like AutoStore, Exotec and GreyOrange at work in Atlanta.
Other use cases
Not every need in the supply chain relates to material handling. Warehouses, distribution centers and stores are places where robots and people work side by side. There are many necessary activities, such as keeping the working environment clean and ensure that physical inventory actually corresponds to the data in the WMS, that are increasingly being addressed with autonomous solutions from companies like Kärcher, Avidbots and COROS.
Originally published at https://www.linkedin.com.
