“Given that most wonder what the next six months will bring, what value could there be in guessing what 2025 will look like?”
Co-editors of the U.S. Roadmap for Material Handling & Logistics accepted the challenge of crafting the roadmap, which was released in a final version on January 15, 2014, after 18 months. The document was an attempt by “the industry”—meaning everyone from end users to suppliers to educators to NGOs and government—to look out 10 to 15 years into the future and ask, “How should we be preparing?”. The roadmap is an opportunity for everyone to ask the big questions.
Following we brought part of the report published by Logistics Management on February 13, 2014. To read the full and original article, go to logisticsmgmt.com.
1. The changing workforce
Ongoing regional and national recruitment strategies for finding employees should be standard practice across the industry.
2. The growth of e-commerce
All shipments should be trackable in real time from the instant an order is placed to the instant of delivery, both in transit and in facilities, at the level of individual items and independent of carrier or transportation mode. In addition, typical order-to-ship processing times in e-commerce distribution should be sufficient to support same-day delivery of in-stock items.
3. Relentless competition
A significant portion of shippers should be sharing transportation assets as a standard business practice.
4. Mass personalization
The materials handling and logistics industry must be capable of supporting a highly diverse set of order and distribution channels and delivery methods.
5. Urbanization
The 15 largest U.S. cities should have at least one open shared self-service parcel delivery kiosk network available for use by multiple retailers, according to the roadmap. And, most U.S. consumers should have the capability to specify personalized delivery point information to multiple retailers, including deliveries to their real-time current location.
6. Mobile and wearable computing
Control and execution systems featuring wearable computing devices should be developed and widely adopted in transportation, warehousing and manufacturing.
7. Robotics and automation
By 2025, the roadmap points to affordable robotic order picking systems being available that support high-throughput, single-piece picking in both part-to-picker and picker-to-part configurations. And, economical, high-speed automation to load and unload trucks should be available, both at the carton and pallet level.
8. Sensors and the Internet of Things
Major intermodal hubs throughout the United States should have the ability to handle standardized containers at the unit-load and carton level, plus load/unload integration with freight containers. And, it further suggests that universally accepted data formats for all types of sensors should be established.
9. Big Data and predictive analytics
Most applications accessed by logistics and supply chain professionals should be cloud based and that vehicle routing and scheduling should use real-time traffic feeds as well as support dynamic rerouting.
10. Sustainability
By 2025, the industry should have developed standard, accepted metrics for assessing environmental impact; consumers should have a better understanding of the environmental consequences of their choices; energy usage by transportation and material handling technologies should continue to require less energy, or be powered by alternative forms of energy; and LEED-certifiable manufacturing and distribution facilities should include scoring for materials handling equipment.