Celebrating the Technological Foundation of Manufacturing Month
Another year, and another Manufacturing Month is upon us! The first Friday of every October is recognized as national Manufacturing Day, a day set aside to recognize the individuals, companies, and institutions that contribute to America’s manufacturing industry. On top of honoring manufacturing’s significant role in the history of our country, the day kicks off a month-long drive to spread education, awareness, and interest in modern manufacturing throughout the nation.
Looking towards the horizon, the industry needs people and communities that believe in manufacturing as both a meaningful career path and rewarding domestic business venture. More and more, technology is the glue melding both of these aspirations together, paving the way for high-tech careers and production processes alike. For this reason, we’d like to highlight a handful of emerging technological trends and offerings that are pushing manufacturing into the future. Depending on you, the reader, these examples might serve as inspiration towards new career opportunities, new project solution ideas, or if nothing else, a few more reasons to celebrate Manufacturing Month.
Emergent Manufacturing Warehouse & Material Handling Technologies
To demonstrate the ways that technological advancements are impacting manufacturing, warehousing, and material handling industries at large, we’ll share a handful of examples below pulled from recent projects we’ve been working on. With this list, our goal is less about individual products and more about broader technological trends flowing through the manufacturing industry today.
- Intralogistics – historically, manufacturing, warehousing, logistics, central utilities, and other core domains of a business were automated independently using separate control systems. Today, new technology platforms referred to as Intralogistics systems can easily integrate all these different areas of the business, specifically managing the flow of materials, information, and operations seamlessly across each domain. Intralogistics platforms sit alongside MES (manufacturing execution systems), WMS (warehouse management systems), and ERP (enterprise resource planning) systems, managing and optimizing processes within and between these systems for maximum operational effectiveness.
- Personnel Reallocation – over the last several decades, the main reoccurring criticism of automation has been the displacement of human employees. This criticism has largely proven to not hold true. In fact, manufacturers today are in greater need of qualified staff than ever before. The reality of the situation is that warehouse automation more often is deployed to make up for unfilled positions, as opposed to eliminating positions outright. This situation has given rise to a whole new arena of advanced technologies specifically designed to reallocate and retain staff, from automated on-machine upskilling to gamifying complex tasks.
- Pedestrian Awareness Systems – the last few years of increasing AMR (autonomous mobile robots) adoption have brought warehouse fleet densities to record levels. To address the safety concerns brought on by these commingled human-driven and automated vehicle environments, new operator assist systems and adaptive visions systems such as those available through Hyster and Yale are being added to warehouse vehicles to identify staff against busy backgrounds, notify drivers of looming risks, and automatically slow lifts to protect pedestrians.
- Fully Integrated Safety – continuing on the topic of safety, many warehouse vehicle manufacturers are taking on the perspective that safety features should evolve from independent protective functions to fully integrated safety platforms across their vehicles and networked telematics. For example, more forklift OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) are now tying every safety device on the lift into their vehicle management platforms, collecting data and interlocking safety permissives across the board. This trend has been made possible by higher bandwidth networking hardware, faster cloud service data processing, and lower-cost sensor technologies.
- AI Decision Systems – as much as Artificial Intelligence (AI) has become a modern buzzword, there are many AI-infused machine learning platforms making their way into warehouse spaces today (and for the foreseeable future). AI decision systems are designed to collect, crunch, solve, and optimize data problems at the large scales of modern connected warehouses. Inventory placement, bottleneck avoidance, energy minimization, staffing forecasts, and many other aspects of a warehouse can now be automatically solved for by AI decision systems.
- Building Utility Infrastructure Automation – for some time now, manufacturing businesses have installed BMS (building management systems) to monitor and tune their facility’s utility infrastructure including HVAC (heating, ventilation and air conditioning), lighting, thermal, and water systems. Today, emerging technologies allow manufacturers to integrate these building infrastructure systems with actual production or warehouse technology systems, such that both platforms can communicate and optimize their services to complement the other’s needs. In turn, truly “smart” manufacturing environments can now cut energy costs deeper than BMS platforms alone.
- Consolidated Feature Sets – while the most often recognized technological advancements are those introducing brand new features and benefits to the market, there are plenty of equally impactful cases that simply make certain technologies more accessible to everyday users. In manufacturing, technology systems are increasingly combining multiple functions such as process control, data analytics, predictive forecasting, real-time diagnostics, and continuous process improvement all within common platforms. Not only does this make wide feature sets more accessible and more cost effective, but also simplifies implementation.
Adopting Evolving Manufacturing Technologies with Intention
It’s Manufacturing Month. You just read about many new ways that technological advancements are reshaping the manufacturing industry, and can infer all of the new production methods, operational paradigms, and career opportunities that will come as a result. Caught up in the celebration of what American manufacturing can and will become in the future, you might wonder how you can tap into these new frontiers in your own business or career. That’s a wonderful aspiration, and we’d like to share a few thoughts to help you do so with intention:
- Technological Cost Leveling – first off, technological developments are a universal force for cost leveling, almost always making their previous-generation variants cheaper and easier to implement. What was brand new last year will be mature this year, and cheaper for it. For example, there was a time when AGVs (automated guided vehicles) were cost-prohibitive but today are quite competitive and widely available. So, our first suggestion is to remember that new technology brings along the benefit of making previous options more affordable, which might be plenty to meet your needs.
- Third-Party Validation – today more than ever, emerging technology systems are rushed to market in the name of “disruption” and trend capitalization. While that might work in some sectors, manufacturing is a mission-critical industry that cannot stomach the calamity that premature technology deployments may cause. For this reason, we suggest ensuring that any new prospective technology purchases come along with some form of third-party validation to mitigate risk and instill confidence.
- Be Early, But Not First – putting the last few points together, we find a very pragmatic position to take regarding new manufacturing technology adoption is to strive to be an early adopter only after thorough due diligence, but not first. Unless you have a compelling reason or competitive opportunity to jump to a brand-new technology out of the gate, let the market work out the kinks without putting your organization at risk. In fact, this idea is founded on business continuity principles, suggesting that the best way to deploy new technologies is through stringent risk management and engineering evaluation processes – new disciplines that manufacturers will need to expand to keep up with technological advancements into the future.
We hope that this discussion has been helpful for your commercial material handling needs. Fairchild Equipment is the Upper Midwest’s premier Material Handling Equipment and Service resource, with headquarters in Green Bay, Wisconsin, and numerous locations in five states ready 24/7 to serve your needs. For more information or to discuss which Warehouse Optimization solution might be best for you, please send us a message or call us at (844) 432-4724.
