The warehouse automation market currently exhibits many characteristics that lead me to believe the competitive landscape is on the verge of rapid change. This isn’t typically the case with a mature market. But e-commerce growth, robotics advancements, and international competition have set the stage for an acceleration of change. Market participants that remain complacent are likely to suffer as a result.
As the global economic outlook improves, worldwide mergers and acquisitions (M&A) activity is predicted to pick up. M&A deal volume and deal value remains strong. According to recent surveys, 56 percent of responding companies expect to actively pursue acquisitions in the next 12 months[1], with global M&A value projected to top $3.2 trillion, up 23 percent […]
The Acquisition In-Brief Last week Körber AG announced that it had acquired HighJump. I first became aware of Körber in 2014 when the German holding company acquired Inconso, a German supply chain software provider. At that time, Inconso was a complementary addition to Körber’s other Intralogistics businesses, but was distinct in its focus on commercial […]
Oracle recently announced a definitive agreement to acquire Logfire, a Cloud WMS provider. Last year I explained that Cloud WMS deployments still remain limited compared to Cloud adoption of other supply chain software (I am using the term “Cloud” to represent single instance, multi-tenant solutions). And with good reason. WMS is a real-time application that […]
The global warehouse automation & control (WA&C) market has experienced numerous mergers & acquisitions over the years. However, most of the acquisitions have been smaller vendors that sell similar solutions that offer a complimentary technology, capability, or additional geographic presence to the acquirer. In contrast, the recently announced acquisitions of Dematic and Intelligrated represent major shifts in the global […]
As well as 2015 being the warmest year since records began (in 1850), it was also pretty hot 12 months in the area of business mergers and acquisitions, which hit a new high of $4.3 trillion in deals struck. Specifically in the logistics industry, several so-called mega deals led to a near year-on-year doubling of […]
When companies increase focus and concentration on core capabilities to improve their service offerings and increase shareholder value, divestitures can often result. A major transition that impacts all areas of a business, including supply chain reliability and efficiency, divestitures have the potential to be positive or negative. You decide. While restructuring assets of a business […]
