Rapid growth in the worldwide market for warehouse automation and control systems is being driven primarily by the global boom in e-commerce, and its profound effects on fulfillment requirements, according to an ARC Advisory Group market study.
SATO, a global provider of Auto-ID solutions, has launched the CL6NX, a 6-inch industrial thermal printer designed for intuitive operation, easy integration and industrial-strength durability in manufacturing, warehousing, logistics, healthcare and retail environments.
With a new year comes a renewed focus on inventory and how to manage it. All systems and aspects of the supply chain must match up with customer demands in the ever-present and evolving omnichannel environment. After all, customers can order goods from anywhere on any smart device, and their expectations are that they will pick up their goods, or have their merchandise delivered to any place – on their terms. People want quick results – or else they will find another outlet from which to shop.
Analyst Insight: The need for speed, along with margin pressures, is causing food and beverage distributors to look for ways to achieve greater efficiencies in the warehouse. The continued growth of the "long tail" that are slow movers combined with a scarcity of available labor and the complexity of route-stop sequencing makes automation a good option. But to justify investments you have to look beyond the labor savings alone. – Frank Jewell, Food and Beverage Industry Leader, Fortna Inc.
For some supply chain and logistics functions, rugged wearable computers can be a real boon. At the same time, the cost of managing these devices can be daunting.
From self-driving cars, to intelligent assistants on smart phones, to IBM's Watson beating humans at Jeopardy, to potentially autonomous military weapons, the effects of increasingly sophisticated automation are undeniable. With leading companies like Google spending millions to acquire artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics start-ups, financial markets are also betting that AI will become a bigger part of our lives and society.
While pop-up retail is not new - dating back to California-based Vacant in 1999 - the concept of pop-up distribution centers is a fairly new one. Following the same idea, it involves setting up a temporary distribution center in a specific location for a set period of time to meet a temporary need, then shutting it down.
Datalogic ADC, a vendor of automatic data capture and imaging technologies, has added the PowerScan PBT9500 imager to its PowerScan 9500 family of products.
