Materials Handling Innovation Matters More Than Ever （googel翻译）

这不再是你父辈的物料处理行业。领先的供应商正在开发创新文化，为新挑战带来新的解决方案。 作者Bob Trebilcock·2018年5月15日 约翰希尔对技术创新有所了解。在一项跨越50年的职业生涯中，希尔处于条形码扫描和射频识别工业应用开发以及第一个仓库管理软件系统的前沿。他有一个原因，他记得1971年10月在别克的第十工厂，这是在零售和零售销售点之外首次实施条形码扫描。

“我带着50磅重的扫描仪进入别克给他们示范，”希尔回忆说。  希尔并没有在自己的桂冠上留下余地。他还是St. Onge的董事，最近参加了一个自动识别会议，该会议将400多位专家聚集到加利福尼亚州桑尼维尔谷歌的总部。当他看到新的机械和技术解决方案上市时，他看到播种的种子早在上世纪70年代和80年代就开始结出硕果。

 “我们终于来到了我们所有人认为我们大约在1980年左右的时候，”希尔说。“我们今天没有做什么，即使是人工智能，也掩盖了我们认为我们可以在40多年前做的事情。只是我们今天没有那些工具。“

汤普金斯的工程师车库里的乒乓球台是机器人分拣解决方案的灵感来源，可用于电子商务实现，并可能在零售商店的后台使用。

   那么，什么是材料处理创新？而且，行业如何在与苹果和谷歌等创新者相关的瓶子中捕捉亮点？这些是我们在2017年5月问题中首次提出的问题。我们开始着手确定创新对我们行业意味着什么，以及它在一些领先的OEM和系统解决方案提供商（包括Swisslog，丰田物料搬运，德马泰克，霍尼韦尔Intelligrated和Knapp物流自动化）中的应用方式。（您可以阅读“物料处理创新（及其重要性）”）。 今年，在Modex之后，我们认为我们会重新讨论这个话题。但我们并没有把重点放在家庭自动化领域，而是问了六家在软件或技术领域发挥作用的公司，包括几家初创公司和小公司，这些创新对他们的组织意味着什么。这是我们学到的。 从线性到指数的创新 如果你见过任何农民保险广告，你就会知道这句话：“我们知道一两件事，因为我们看到了一两件事情。”就像约翰希尔一样，同样可以汤普金斯国际公司董事长兼首席执行官吉姆汤普金斯说，以及汤普金斯组织的几家初创公司。他们包括电子商务实施的第三方物流（3PL）提供商，机器人公司和基于传感器的组织来开发连接仓库。 汤普金斯定义了两种类型的创新：线性和指数。“线性创新只是维持我们所处的位置，”他表示，其中包括对现有解决方案和技术的改进。

“要真正实现创新，实现指数式创新，就必须改变创新步伐。”  为了实现这一目标，他补充说，需要市场上有需要的人才和资源。为此，汤普金斯创建了一个12人的创新团队，定期开会问：需要填补什么？他还创建了一个创新基金，以便有能力的人员可以利用这些资源来探索可能满足需求的解决方案。 行动创新的一个例子是Tompkins从中国获得许可的机器人航运分拣技术的发展。“我们可以对其进行修改，这将是线性的，但是我们创建了软件，将其转换为单位分拣机，使我们能够进行批次拣选，整理和打包订单，然后将其重新放回原处设备将其分类为航运，“汤普金斯说。“这是指数级的。”下一步是把它放在一个便携式平台上，这个平台可以在轮班结束时折叠起来储存起来，比如说在一个大型零售商的背后。灵感来自汤普金斯工程师车库中的一张乒乓桌。他说：“这种需求是制造一种可以快速部署的便携式解决方案。”

  Tompkins承认，一些解决方案将领先市场。“当我与创新团队第一次见面时，我说这不是一个咨询项目，”他回忆道。“我们的任务是阅读网页上还没有的东西。我们将解决客户尚未看到的问题。“  自上而下的变化 有时候，您可以教老辈一个新的窍门。Zebra Technologies和JDA是可以被认为是成熟技术的长期组织：Zebra的自动识别和打印以及JDA的仓库和供应链管理和执行软件解决方案。 与此同时，这些技术处于已建立的解决方案和下一代工具的交集之中，这些工具将定义明天的供应链，如传感器，人工智能（AI），大数据，物联网和云计算等。那么，他们如何回应？在这两种情况下，展望未来都是由上而下推动的。 Zebra供应链解决方案总监Mark Wheeler表示：“我们的首席执行官并没有说我们是打印机公司，而是在企业资产智能领域。“我们的角色正在从事务型向分析型转变：与仓库中发生的事件相关的记录系统不同，我们正在成为现实系统，以便实时了解叉车，人员和订单的位置。我们正在研究仓库中发生的事情，并询问如何利用传感器技术重新考虑这些以获取经济价值。“ 根据高级联盟主管Steve Simmerman的说法，JDA有类似的动向，他说创新是首席执行官的一项重要举措。“当他进来时，他说我们的客户需要创新的解决方案，”Simmerman说。“我们理解货物的物理运动。那么，现在，我们如何使用机器学习，物联网和人工智能来提高这些系统的效率？“例如，规划系统如何利用社交媒体新闻事件和天气数据为飓风哈维等活动制定行动计划即将罢工？ 两家公司都创建了致力于创新的团队，与传统研发部门分开：Zebra拥有一支致力于智能边缘解决方案的团队，推动从事务型向分析型转变，JDA在蒙特利尔创建了一个创新中心，其中数据科学家负责纯粹的研发以及与客户合作开发点解决方案，然后将其整合到JDA的产品套件中。 Simmerman说：“在三到五年的时间里，我真的相信我们将看到没人想象的物理基础设施和软件管理方面的变化。 Zebra Technologies正在研究如何使用传统系统收集的数据来连接整个企业的资产。  This is no longer your father’s materials handling industry. Leading suppliers are developing a culture of innovation, leading to new solutions for new challenges. By Bob Trebilcock · May 15, 2018 John Hill knows a thing or two about technology innovation. In a career that spans 50 years, Hill was at the forefront of the development of industrial applications for bar code scanning and radio frequency identification and the first warehouse management software systems. There’s a reason he remembers that the first implementation of bar code scanning outside of point of sale in grocery and retail was in October 1971 at Buick’s Plant 10. “I carried the 50-pound scanner into Buick to give them the demonstration,” Hill recalls. Hill has not rested on his laurels. Still a director at St. Onge, he recently attended a conference on automatic identification that brought together more than 400 experts to Google’s headquarters in Sunnyvale, Calif. When he looks at the new mechanical and technology solutions coming to market, he sees the seeds planted back in the 1970s and 1980s now bearing fruit. “We’ve finally come to where we all thought in our naivete that we’d be by around 1980,” Hill says. “Nothing we’re doing today, even artificial intelligence, belies what we thought we could do more than 40 years ago. It’s just that we didn’t have the tools then that we have today.”

A ping pong table in a Tompkins’ engineer’s garage was the inspiration for a robotic sortation solution for use in e-commerce fulfillment and, potentially, in the backrooms of retail stores.  So just what is materials handling innovation? And, how does the industry capture the lightning in a bottle associated with innovators like Apple and Google? Those were questions we first asked in the May 2017 issue. We set out to define just what innovation means to our industry along with how it is approached at some of the leading OEM and system solution providers, including Swisslog, Toyota Material Handling, Dematic, Honeywell Intelligrated and Knapp Logistics Automation. (You can read “Materials Handling Innovation (And Why It Matters)”). This year, on the heels of Modex, we thought we’d revisit the topic. But instead of focusing on the household names in automation, we asked six companies playing in the software or technology space, including several startups and smaller players, just what innovation means to their organizations. Here’s what we learned.From linear to exponential innovationIf you’ve ever seen any of the Farmers Insurance commercials, you know the punch line: “We know a thing or two because we’ve seen a thing or two.” Like John Hill, the same can be said of Jim Tompkins, the chair and CEO of Tompkins International as well as several startups springing from the Tompkins organization. They include a third-party logistics (3PL) provider for e-commerce fulfillment, a robotics company and a sensor-based organization to develop the connected warehouse. Tompkins defines two types of innovation: Linear and exponential. “Linear innovation is just maintaining the pace of where we’re at,” he says, which would include improvements to existing solutions and technologies. “To do true innovation that results in exponential innovation, you have to move the pace of innovation.” To make that happen, he adds, requires a need in the market, competent people and resources. To that end, Tompkins created a 12-member innovation team that meets on a regular basis to ask: What is a need that has to be filled? He also created an innovation fund so competent people would have the resources available to explore solutions that might fill the need. An example of innovation in action is the evolution of a robotic shipping sorter technology that Tompkins licensed from China. “We could’ve made modifications to it, which would have been linear, but instead, we created software that turned it into a unit sorter that allows us to do a batch pick, sort and pack orders and then put it back on the same equipment to sort it to shipping,” Tompkins says. “That’s exponential.” The next step was to put it on a portable platform that could be folded up and stored out of the way at the end of a shift, say in a big box retailer’s backroom. The inspiration came from a ping pong table in one of Tompkins’ engineer’s garage. “The need,” he says, “was to make a portable solution that could be rapidly deployed.” Some solutions will be ahead of the market, Tompkins concedes. “When I had the first meeting with the innovation team, I said this is not a consulting project,” he recalls. “Our task is to read things that aren’t yet on the page. We’re going to fix problems that the client hasn’t seen yet.”Change from the top downSometimes, you can teach an old dog a new trick. Zebra Technologies and JDA are long-standing organizations in what might be considered mature technologies: Automatic identification and printing at Zebra, and warehouse and supply chain management and execution software solutions at JDA. At the same time, those technologies are at the intersection of established solutions and the next-generation tools that are going to define tomorrow’s supply chains, such as sensors, artificial intelligence (AI), Big Data, the Internet of Things and Cloud computing. So, how are they responding? In both cases, a look to the future is being driven from the top down. “Our CEO doesn’t talk about us being a printer company but as being in the enterprise asset intelligence space,” says Mark Wheeler, Zebra’s director of supply chain solutions. “Our role is evolving from being transactional to analytical: Instead of being a system of record for what happened in the warehouse, we’re becoming a system of reality for where a lift truck, person and order are in real time. We’re looking at what’s going on in the warehouse and asking how that can be rethought with sensor technology to gain economic value.” Something similar is in motion at JDA, according to Steve Simmerman, senior alliance director, who says that innovation is a key initiative from the CEO. “When he came in, he said our customers are demanding innovative solutions,” says Simmerman. “We understand the physical movement of goods. So, now, how can we use machine learning, IoT and artificial intelligence to make those systems more efficient?” For example, how can planning systems use social media news events and weather data to create action plans for when an event like Hurricane Harvey is about to strike? Both companies have created teams dedicated to innovation separate from traditional R&D: Zebra has a team working on Intelligent Edge Solutions that is driving the change from transactional to analytical and JDA created an innovation center in Montreal where data scientists are tasked with pure R&D as well as working with customers to develop point solutions that might then be folded into JDA’s suite of products. “In three to five years, I really believe we’re going to see changes in the physical infrastructure and software managing DCs that no one has imagined,” says Simmerman.

Zebra Technologies is looking at how the data collected by its conventional systems can now be used to connect assets across the enterprise.