PROMAT 2019 – FOCUS ON LAST MILE DELIVERY MARKET AND MICRO FULFILLMENT
Micro-Fulfillment and Last-Mile Delivery Market – New Opportunity for Warehouse Automation Vendors
Till now, everyone has been focusing on optimizing the large and centralized distribution center so that fulfillment can be consolidated and distribution cost can be minimized. But last mile delivery is still a major challenge for the industry due to the dependency on manual delivery and a high cost spent because of return deliveries in the e-commerce industry. As a result, micro-fulfillment (Opportunity worth ~$10B by 2026) has been a solution to bring the distribution center closer to the end-customer along with other solutions like Delivery Robots for Last Mile Delivery Market.
Recently, KNAPP and Takeoff Technologies announced a $150 million, 50-site order that the companies say represents one of the most significant events in eGrocery adoption to date. Takeoff offers a turnkey end-to-end technology solution for eGrocery, which is based in part on the KNAPP robotic shuttle technology for the material handling automation component. The Takeoff business model provides a unique approach to the e-commerce order fulfillment of groceries – micro fulfillment centers co-located at the supermarket level for immediate grocery pickup. The modular technology takes less space, is highly responsive to meet order demand in real time and can deliver groceries quickly and inexpensively for customer pickup. As a result, it is contributing towards Last Mile Delivery Market challenges and solutions.
“By the end of 2020, Takeoff will have accumulated at least $2 billion in gross merchandise volume for our retail partners and this solution will cement Knapp & Takeoff as world leaders in hyperlocal automated fulfillment,” says Max Pedró, co-founder and president of Takeoff.”
Similarly, Israel-based CommonSense Robotics has partnered with Israel’s Largest drugstore chain Super-Pharm to pilot its micro-fulfillment technology. The start-up is also reportedly working with US grocery retailers to open 5 micro-fulfillment installations in the US in 2019. CommonSense Robotics offers an automated, urban solution for retailers who need fast deliveries. They rely on hundreds of small robots in their micro-fulfillment centers. The company owns and operates the sites, so retailers pay to use the services. This pay-as-you-go service allows grocery retailers to save money and earn greater profits.
We can also see some similar trends related to delivery robots which are working towards last mile delivery issue and its solution. Driverless delivery start-up Nuro just got a $940 million in financing from Japan’s SoftBank Vision Fund. KiwiBot is providing similar services for the university campus. The University of California at Berkeley and the University of California, Los Angeles were two of the earliest colleges to welcome the food delivery robots, KiwiBot. Now the start-up behind the roaming drone, Kiwi, has plans to expand to 15 more campuses including Harvard and MIT to target Last Mile Delivery Market.
We have recently published our Warehouse Automation Market in June 2019. Overall, there is an approximate $27B opportunity by 2025 in warehouse automation space to move forward. Read More
Autonomous Mobile Robots – Moving towards an extraordinary milestone
Autonomous mobile robots are much more capable of navigating dynamic environments. They require little external input to do so, which is an important capability. Industrial environments like construction sites are inherently dynamic. Manufacturing facilities are becoming more dynamic as they pursue leaner operations. Robots that can operate within these environments will have major commercial potential, introducing process automation without hindering the need for frequent changes in the production environment.
Typical AGVs need some form of external guidance, whether it’s permanent wires, magnetic strips or sensors embedded in the floor. This creates a rigid system that’s difficult and expensive to adjust as production needs change, which is the main obstacle AMRs aim to overcome.
A major driver for the growth in mobile robots is the need for greater flexibility in factories and warehouses. From autonomous forklifts and tote conveyors to heavy-lift platforms, mobile robots can enable users to work with existing, non-standardized facilities. They can also help avoid the costs of bolted-down infrastructure such as stationary conveyors, multi-layer racks, and positioning systems.
That is why, we were able to see the vendors like Geek+ and Grey Orange in ProMAT 2019 first time. At the same time, vendors like Locus Robotics, 6 River Systems and inVia Robotics were having a bigger exhibition to launch their new products.
ROEQ, a partner of Mobile Industrial Robots (MiR), showed off its TR500 roller for the MiR500. Another MiR partner, Nord Modules, displayed its modular system for lifting and loading payloads onto MiR’s mobile robots. On the navigation side, Humatics and Vecna Robotics’ partnership and Mobile robot Amazon’s recent acquisition of Canvas Technology are examples of how companies are collaborating to improve and spread their offerings.
AGV/AMR has been a major contributor in warehouse automation market growth due to high demand in e-commerce and retail sector and market is expected to grow at 12% CAGR by 2025. Read More in our latest report published in July 2019 on Warehouse Automation Market
Next Gen Supply Chain – Convergence with Industry 4.0
Industry 4.0 is the latest disruption that is forcing the companies to re-plan their strategy and design towards supply chain operation models. Several existing technologies like cloud computing, data analytics and automated material handling solutions have already changed the traditional ways of operation in the supply chain. Addition to that, there are some latest mega trends like Internet of Things, Artificial Intelligence, 5G and Blockchain which are going the change this game entirely. Digital Twin is the new concept that has a potential to operate the entire supply chain remotely in an efficient and effective manner. On the top of this, customer’s expectation is the biggest challenge in current operation and is converting it into a major driver for the adoption of such emerging technologies to change the business model. E-commerce has been the critical factor to grow the customer expectations. Service expectations are also combined with a much stronger granularization of orders and individual customization as well. Besides the need to adapt, supply chains also have the opportunity to reach the next horizon of operational effectiveness, to leverage emerging digital supply chain business models, and to transform the company into a digital supply chain.
Mckinsey has mapped the concept of Supply Chain 4.0 into 6 main value drivers as following
- Planning
- Physical Flow
- Performance Management
- Order Management
- Collaboration
- Supply Chain Strategy
There was a huge focus on Next Gen Supply Solutions in ProMAT 2019. The latest drone technology for warehouse inventory counts by Corvus Robotics, PINC and Wilstair, LLC have made drones fully autonomous, without any need for human piloting or battery swaps. This allows drones to fly and recognize pallet/carton labels without any labor cost at all. BEUMER Group presented its new AI enabled fulfillment breakthroughs, including the integration of Intelligent Automation and routing sortation to improve the costs, effectiveness and project lead time. Similarly, Alien technology and Barcoding Inc. explored the role of passive RFID data collection in IoT/Blockchain environments. Passive RFID is the only data collection methodology that can efficiently gather massive amounts of data quickly and efficiently. Yale Material Handling explained the importance of technology convergence through Automation, Artificial Intelligence and IoT Analytics to augment the human efforts rather than replacing them.
A few days later to ProMAT 2019, we had a conference on NextGen Supply Chain organized by Peerless Media Group. Players like Cisco, Flex, Dematic, Honeywell, GEODIS, DHL, Johnson Controls and HP presented their solutions on different emerging technologies to visualize the future of supply chain in next 5 years.
We are also going to publish a market research report on Digital Supply Chain Market in Q3’2019. According to our upcoming market research study “Next Gen Digital Supply Chain Market By Technology (Artificial Intelligence, Internet of Things, Blockchain, Augmented Reality, Robotics & Automation, Cloud Computing, Cyber Security, Digital Twin, Driverless Vehicles and Drones, 3D Printing, Wearable & Mobile Devices), By Solutions, By Functions, By Organization Size, By End-User Industry, and Geography – Global Forecast to 2025“, Digital Supply Chain market is expected to get almost double from USD 14.5 Billion in 2018 to USD 28.6 billion by 2025, at a CAGR of 10.2% between 2019 and 2025. Click Here for more details