The coronavirus pandemic has made it clear that humans make supply chains vulnerable to failure. Greater reliance on automated solutions will be a given from here on out.
Automation is impacting warehouse operations in multiple ways, promising dramatic efficiencies in labor, hardware, software and order fulfillment, says Chris Arnold, president and chief operating officer of Trew.
As the coronavirus pandemic begins to strain the U.S. medical supply chain, California startup Zipline is looking into ways to deploy sooner and at wider scale.
The coronavirus has hurt many companies in China and around the world. Neolix, a driverless delivery business based in Beijing, isn’t among them — in fact, it’s seen a jump in demand.
Here's what thought leaders at MODEX 2020 are saying about warehouse automation, labor management, big data analytics, artificial intelligence and more.
Challenge: Slow-moving products were delaying order fulfillment and clogging existing automation systems for a large pharmaceutical distributor. Totes filled with outgoing products were backing up on conveyors — creating a bottleneck, diminishing throughput and ultimately underutilizing other automation systems down the line.
Many worry that the much-ballyhooed gig economy is merely a stepping stone to a time when all of those jobs will be performed by robots. But don’t tell that to Brett Helling.
