Post Pandemic World: Tech innovations that could change the industries

The coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic will be remembered as one of the biggest black swan events in history. COVID-19 impacted on all fronts social, technical, industrial and economic lives, and spread is still not contaminated. Industries across the globe are looking for solutions to run their business. Especially supply chain models are completely disrupted.

Technology is the only hope and many new tech innovations are already helping or ready to change the world. We spoke to Satish Shukla, Co-Founder & Head, Marketing and HR, Addverb Technologies to understand latest tech developments, use of robots, etc.

The latest tech developments in India’s supply chain and manufacturing sector

There have been some key triggers in last 5 years which have changed India’s supply chain and manufacturing sector, such as the rise of E-Commerce and it’s spread into every nuke and corner of the country after internet data revolution. Growth of organized retail in major towns and cities, implementation of GST which led to the consolidation of small warehouses into mega distribution centres. The high real-estate prices in cities which forced the consumer warehouses to outside the city & the supply and demand fluctuations.

These triggers necessitated a flexible supply chain to accommodate the demand surges & reliable warehousing operations that help in fulfilling the requirement within the stipulated time and in an accurate manner. As operations scale up, it is critical to improve the productivity of people working in the warehouses and factories and people are also becoming more conscious about doing more productive & meaningful work.

So in line with that, the demand for automation solutions, such as autonomous mobile robots, automated guided vehicles, picking technologies like Pick to Light, Pick by Voice and Pick by Vision-based systems, warehouse software etc., is increasing as these can improve the productivity drastically vis-a-vis manual operations.

Also the packaging robots, once constrained to the assembly line are making way into the warehouses for different applications such as bin picking, pick & place, and then mobile robots which are used for multiple applications of material transfer inside the warehouses. More importantly, during the last 5 years due to technological advancements, automation has emerged as a necessity more than a luxury.

Robots are becoming the saviours

Right now, the availability of workforce in warehouses is limited as most of the working class left for their hometowns due to the fear of Covid-19. Even after their return, due to social distancing norms, factories and warehouses will not be able to deploy full force. Hence, to operate at full capacity, now there is the need of automation and robots more than ever – AMRs that move material from one place to other, driverless forklifts, IoT that provide visibility etc.

Also, it is essential to maintain minimum no. of touches on the product while it is inside the warehouses, so automation systems can be used for that, like Goods to Person technologies such as shuttles, ASRS systems& the respective software’s.

The rise of e-commerce especially for essentials such as grocery, medicines necessitated the warehouses to be located near to the customer that is inside the cities, which led to the rise of micro fulfilment centres. These MFCs are mini distribution centres, enclosed in an area of 2k to 10k sq.ft., and can help deliver the orders to customers within 2 hours of order placement.

To minimize the operational expenses of these MFCs and to fulfil the customer expectations of < 2-hour delivery, MFC needs to use automation & that is a big boost to the automation and robotics industry in the post- covid world.

The big changes and challenges faced by the logistics sector

The biggest challenges covid-19 posed for the logistics & the intra-logistics sector are;

a. Transport – which was completely closed in all the 3 modes – sea, road, air; both domestic & international. This resulted in complete stopping of transport of raw materials from suppliers to then manufacturers and the final goods to customers.

b. Shortage of labour –As most people left for the hometown, very less availability.

c. Lack of strong contingency plan – many businesses have not been prepared to handle this unprecedented crisis and at this scale. Certain industries like essentials such as groceries, FMCG, medicines have seen a demand surge, and some other industries like entertainment, travel, luxury shopping etc took a worse hit.

d. Reduced consumer spends – The uncertainty prevailed in the market made consumers spend averse except on the essentials & also as the economy came to a standstill, there is no availability of liquid cash in the market.

As mentioned, while some industries had an adverse blow due to the shutdown of the economy & the lockdown, some other industries flourished especially the groceries, f&b, Pharma & FMCG industries.

To meet out the increased demand & the handicapped supply chain, automation has emerged as the levelling point & with-it various distribution concepts such as micro fulfilment centres arose. Till now, the concept of micro fulfilment centres was restricted to some of the advanced countries but now they are mushrooming in India. With a diverse range of automation product portfolio, we can design multiple solutions of micro fulfilment centres.

Autonomous mobile robots

The autonomous mobile robot is used for material movement of different payloads from 100 kg to 1000 kg and works in collaboration with humans. It moves at a speed of 1.5 m/s and is guided by LIDAR based natural navigation. Its 2-stage sensor-based navigation mechanism, one to slow down and another to stop the robot in case any obstacles/human intervention in the environment, coupled with the warning & alarm signals makes it very safe to work along with humans.

The robot’s movement is completely autonomous wherein the map of the entire layout is fed at the beginning by taking it for a walk & then it starts working within it by finding out the shortest and less congested path for a given mission (movement operation). This entire operational setup procedure takes less than 20 min & a fleet of bots will be ready to perform material handling operations.

Voice and image-based picking technology

Voice-based Picking system offers paperless hands-free order picking and fulfilment solutions that gives high accuracy and productivity. Upon activation, it gives verbal instructions to the picker on which location to go, how much quantity to pick, and a double check on the product picked, and then the location of the next order.

If an operator can pick up to 60 items in an hour when he is using pen and paper to search and locate the item, the same operator can pick up to 240 items in an hour if he is using a Pick-By-Voice.

It can be installed on any Android smartphone & is available in 14 Indian languages including Hindi & English. Voice-based picking system is enabled with speech to text & vice-versa algorithms enabled with AI & ML. It continuously interacts with the picker during the picking that makes the picker to be more engaged in the job.

Pick by image/vision system is another Person to Goods picking technology designed to enhance the productivity of the pickers & the overall order picking accuracy. It is an augmented reality system, offers hands-free operation with 100% error-free picking and improves quality control. It is best suited for large DCs with thousands of orders processed daily.

Vision picking glasses comprises an integrated navigation system that guides the operator through AR and provides the shortest travel path to reach the destination. Integrated camera in vision picking glasses optically displays order information providing the source and target locations.

They are connected with an existing network for real-time inventory management and updation with the stocks accordingly. Pick by vision fits the requirement for fast picking environments enabling workflow improvement and process optimization.