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There is little doubt that the supply chain increasingly will be automated. But whether you are a Luddite or futurist, it can be easy to ignore the long, winding road that lies ahead before driverless vehicles and predictive alerts to shippers on potential disruptions are the standard.
How long it takes before this future becomes reality is impossible to gauge. The acceleration of technology over the last five years signals to some that we have not seen anything yet, and that may be right. A closer look at the various challenges in adoption and the slower-than-expected pace of other predicted sea changes, however, should give the optimistic and pessimistic a grounding in reality.
The promise of automated trucks, perhaps, is grabbing the most headlines and industry attention; rightly so, considering the potential for efficiencies and scarcity of skilled, long-haul drivers. Rarely mentioned, however, are the onerous regulatory challenges ahead, including counter-lobbying from the Teamsters union, Class I rail operators, and, potentially, safety advocates. One high-profile accident could stall or scrap regulation, much like the trucking industry’s efforts to tweak hours of service collapsed after comedian Tracy Morgan was severely injured when a Wal-Mart truck hit his limousine.
With all this in mind, it is more likely that autonomous trucks will still feature a human participant in case things go amok, akin to how airline pilots are in the cockpit even though much of the navigation is computer controlled.
There are also limits to automation within distribution centers (DCs), particularly those handling e-commerce. Because of the daily and seasonal peaks, it is often more cost-effective to have standard volume flows automated and then scale up human staffing during the surges, David Egan, head of industrial and logistics research in the Americas for CBRE, said at this month’s JOC Inland Distribution Conference in Atlanta.
“There are circumstances in which automation is not a good fit for the situation, often because it is cost-prohibitive,” he told JOC.com. “But there are also tens of thousands of justified DC-automation implementations.”
In the ocean shipping space, automation has helped propel the emergence of so-called digital forwarders. But there are limits to how much can be automated, and those become clear when something goes wrong, said Dan Gardner, president of consulting firm Trade Facilitators. “Clearly, there isn’t a logistics professional on the planet that is going to rely solely on what a website is telling them about a rolled container or a rejected [Automated Export System] submission, he said in a recent commentary. “When things go awry, shippers want to talk to another human, and the person on the other end of the line better know what they’re talking about.”
In fact, automation is transforming the back end more than in terms of actual freight movement. automating mundane processes such as motor carrier selection, route optimization, invoice payment, and more. Even there, there is resistance, “We’re not the fastest-moving industry,” Mitch Weseley, CEO of transportation software provider 3Gtms, said in October at a Chicago conference. “Something that works is hard to displace. If something works, you need a big business reason to change to something new.”
And it has to make financial sense. About 15 years ago, retailers were marveling at the potential radio-frequency identification (RFID) held in increasing visibility to better manage inventory. The high cost of the RFID tags prevented widespread adoption, and the technology had not proved itself either, Egan said. Now, RFID is used in specific areas on the supply chain, a far cry from the global adoption predicted. The technology, Egan said, has not been “the silver bullet to solve visibility in dark areas of the supply chain that the initial hype led us to believe.
Autonomous Vehicles at Plant Grounds
The development of autonomous vehicles for freight transport and logistics outside of plant grounds is primarily conducted on a problem-oriented basis. So called driving robots were developed for use in dangerous situations, e.g. for disarming munitions, or for use in difficult-to-access areas such as deep-sea exploration, work on mountain sides or in dense forests and remote areas such as for work in the mining sector.
Very large automated trucks with a maximum load capacity of 290 metric tons have been used at one of the world’s largest iron-ore mines in Australia since the 1990s. The reason for their development was primarily difficulties in staffing, the dangerous shift work in the outback and the demanding logistical requirements in terms of personnel planning and staff transfer.
Navigation is done via radar and lasers as well as through the use of waypoints for orientation. Monitoring and intervention options are possible via an operation center using wireless transmission. Control is carried out via GPS and dead reckoning, such as in ships or aircraft, through continuous position determination by means of measuring the course, speed and time.
Development of Autonomous Driving and Autonomous Vehicles in Other Means of Transport
Other means of transport, in which technical systems for stabilization, navigation (e.g. digital maps) and environment cognition are used to have also seen increasing degrees of automation.
Aircrafts have been equipped with stabilization systems since the early 20th century, autopilot functions are a long-established feature and the first drones in Germany are already in use in military, police and firefighting applications. Unmanned aerial systems or unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are also used in civil applications in other countries, replacing for example ranchers and inspectors in remote areas. Drones monitor and seed fields and perform pest control functions. Small drones are already in use in Germany as well, for example for inspecting damage caused by storms or fires, in film productions and industrial inspections. Deutsche Bahn (the by far largest German railway company) is currently testing drones for monitoring vehicles and infrastructure. There are also pilot studies under way in the area of transporting commercial goods, in particular packages.
With a carrying capacity of up to 2.5 kg and a range of approximately 15 km, current drones could for example be used to deliver food or medications. A drone that can be used to transport a defibrillator has also been tested. The use of drones for commercial purposes over 5 kg has been generally permitted in many federal states, albeit not in controlled airspace.
