We all expected advanced robots to have a disruptive effect on industry ” and now robotics has entered the supply chain, too. Some of the ways robotics will advance and reinvent supply chain operations and management are fairly straightforward, while others have been a little more unexpected. Below are four major ways robotics are already taking the supply chain to the next level ” complete with specific technologies and implications for each one.
Robots Assume Customer-Facing Roles
Sometimes talking about supply chain operations makes it sound like something that happens away from the public eye. That’s far from the truth, because there are two major points along the average product journey where robots are poised to make a dramatic entrance.
The first is in retail environments, such as Lowe’s, where customers are expected to confront significant store real estate, tens of thousands of products and a small amount of fear of asking an employee a stupid question. In situations like these, the LoweBot and similar simple robots can help customers by finding and then physically leading them to a specific product they’re looking for.
A second customer-facing supply chain role robots are surprisingly well-suited for is last-mile delivery. Don’t expect to see clouds of Amazon-branded delivery drones taking flight in our cities anytime soon ” but do prepare yourself for the idea of automating last-mile delivery to underserved rural locations that are sometimes not cost-effective for entirely human-operated companies to service reliably.
Selective Automation Reduces Injury and Error Risks
One of the greatest supply chain robotics trends to come about so far is selective automation. Far from replacing human jobs outright, selective automation is helping us organize our efforts more effectively by getting people out of dangerous or risky environments, or out of the pilot’s seat of heavy equipment, or away from tedious and error-prone tasks.
In the supply chain, the product handling, manufacturing, order picking, stowing and all the other non-trivial human manipulation skills are a perfect fit for transfer to automated and robotic equipment. This is due to fewer process errors, more human capital to use in higher-level processes, and a reduced chance of harm and injury in potentially dangerous tasks.
It’s not always about automating the major operational chores, either. Even if robots aren’t performing your order-picking or product-stowing, intermediate steps involve using RFID and barcode systems for unified, streamlined inventory management. Just switching to a barcode-based inventory control mechanism can result in 98 percent accuracy rates. The idea of creating a digital representation of everything in a company’s inventory applies to another related concept: the digital twin.
For some sectors in the supply chain, the arrival of 3-D printers ” assembly robots in their own right ” is helping companies achieve just-in-time manufacturing capabilities. It also comes with an equally exciting potential application: creating working digital models of machines and robots that exist in the physical world and training them to operate more effectively, efficiently and safely using data streamed in from their physical counterparts.
Bolt-on Autonomy for Vehicles
There’s an emerging and appealing middle-ground between replacing machinery outright with automated versions and retrofitting your existing equipment, including vehicles, with technology that allows it to operate autonomously.
This idea applies to several different classes of vehicles. If you have small vehicles operating within your facilities, you can move raw product or stow pallets for later shipment. You can also use vans or trucks to move products between facilities or across roadways. There’s a quickly growing cottage industry that provides what are essentially upgrade kits for existing vehicles that allow them to become autonomous.
The technology allows apparatuses to operate the physical controls of the equipment without human intervention, as well as network connectivity so their movements can be tracked and controlled from a central location.
New Types of Human Jobs
This is not a specific technology. Instead, it’s a cumulative benefit of the technologies we’ve discussed here, as well as many others that are coming of age. All of them come with some welcome reassurance: We’re not obsolete quite yet.
Thanks to the rise in autonomous and semi-autonomous robotics technologies all along the supply chain, we’re seeing brand-new career tracks open up, including robotic operators. Whereas some robotics technologies help us drop dangerous or undignified jobs that are worth shedding, others help us create brand-new and highly rewarding fields and disciplines, many of them applicable to the supply chain.
Job descriptions for a robotic operator might vary by industry, but a general idea would be somebody ” or more likely a team of somebodies ” who oversee robotic equipment, sometimes remotely, and maintain, troubleshoot and update as needed.
Another critical discipline that supply chain operators will soon covet, just like many other industries that are pursuing the future, is that of machine learning engineer. None of the technologies described here can function or deliver benefits unless there’s a computer aboard that can make rudimentary decisions without human input. That’s where machine learning comes in.
The Supply Chain’s Bright Future
Each one of the benefits of robotics we’ve talked about is helping our global supply chains and all their operators realize a future where machines don’t reduce our quality of life, but rather help us better manage our resources and time. The intelligent application of robotics is one major piece of that puzzle.
