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Laser Guided Vehicles, a Robotic Solution that Navigates with Precision

Material Handling | By Steve Banker • 09/17/2018

Laser guided vehicles (LGVs) area a flexible automated guided vehicle (AGV) solution. LGVs are a more flexible solution than older forms of AGVs that follows markers or wires in the floor or where navigation is based on following a magnet crumb trail. LGVs can move through a facility on multiple paths and the paths can change as needed. This article explains how a “typical” LGV implementation would take and the steps involved.

Different suppliers of LGVs have a somewhat different approach to laser navigation. At JBT, “LGVs have a navigational laser that is typically elevated 10 to 15 feet in the air, spinning at several revolutions per second,” Mark Longacre explains. Mr. Longacre is an Applications Engineering Manager at JBT Corporation. The range of the laser, 30 meters, roughly 100 feet, is an important factor because it limits the infrastructure required.

Each vehicle has one (or more) of these rotating laser sensors that interact with targets (reflective strips of tape) mounted along the path. The laser sensors receive the reflected signals and use that data to triangulate the vehicle’s position. At JBT, the navigation algorithms recalculate the vehicle position 40 times per second, which means path corrections stay small. The virtual guide paths are created and changed in Layout Wizard software.

In JBT implementations, the targets are usually installed on columns, that would alternate left and right every 50 feet or so. These targets have a center that is highly reflective center surrounded by a quarter inch border that is black. The targets need to be precisely surveyed in a facility. The survey locates the left most edge of the reflective surface and positions it on a CAD drawing with a precision that is usually within one millimeter of what is shown on the drawing. The survey is done using a transit survey tool, a theodolite. This is a precision optical instrument for measurement you may have seen being used surveying properties or at construction sites.

The survey might be done in four hours if the LGV was going to travel a relatively short distance on a simple loop. But in a big facility, which might be as large as two square miles, the survey will probably take about two weeks.

John Clark, Product Marketing for Mobile Automation in North America at Dematic, agrees that surveys for an “average” project probably is about two weeks. He points out, however, that the AGV companies are all busy. Once an AGV is ordered, it might take months to be delivered. At best, you would be looking at the delivery in a matter of several weeks. The initial survey can be done while the vehicles are being built.

Could a customer’s drawings be used? Mr. Clark says Dematic has learned they need to do their own survey. The facility may have been changed in some manner and that may not be reflected in the current CAD on file.

In addition to doing a target survey, a survey of the wireless infrastructure is also done. Reliable wireless coverage allows constant communication between the vehicles and the fleet management software. Reliable wireless coverage also is needed if the vehicle is doing automated barcode scans or is integrated to a warehouse management system.

With some LGV suppliers, a second survey may be done to validate the location of the initial targets. This is particularly advisable if an LGV is navigating not just based on XY coordinates but needs Z coordinates to be able to accurately place pallets in slots in a rack, or on top of each other, or on top of a conveyor. In locations where this kind of precision is needed, the number of targets needed increases. In a big warehouse, where there might be as many as 2000 locations where pallets could be placed, this kind of survey could take as long as two months.

Survey Tool Used for Laser Guided Vehicles Implementation — Precision Survey Tool

The final step is integration testing. Here the vehicles are given a task and the project personnel ensure that the vehicle can go from an origin to a destination accurately. This testing can take from one to two days to three to four weeks depending on the number of paths and the difficulty involved in integrating to a warehouse management system.

So, across all steps, a customer is looking at an installation that will take some months.

The payback from any form of AGV comes in the form of labor savings that result from less time wasted in traveling across a facility. Warehouses and factories in the wealthy Western world are finding it increasingly difficult to hire workers. That is the primary reason the AGV companies are so busy.

LGVs are a form of robots, but an older form that does not get as much publicity. It is a reliable technology. And, despite its age, it remains a very cool technology.

A Provocative Interview with the CEO of OTTO Motors

Automotive Industry | By Steve Banker • 09/04/2018

I’ve recently completed a market study on the autonomous mobile robot market. When doing this kind of study, you talk to as many executives as you can to better understand the dynamics of the industry. An interview with Matt Rendall, the CEO of OTTO Motors, was particularly intriguing.

OTTO Motors CEO — Matt Rendall, CEO of OTTO Motors

There is a mish mash of terms used to describe vehicles that can flexibly move from point A to B without human drivers. “Flexibility” in this context means that these vehicles navigate without having to rely on a preexisting infrastructure that both tightly defines and confines a vehicle’s path. The technologies used in vehicles that navigate indoors clearly overlaps with the technologies being used by the companies developing autonomous cars, like Google

Clearpath, the parent company of OTTO Motors, is a Canadian company founded in 2008 as a spin off from the University of Waterloo. “At that time,” Mr. Rendall said, “autonomous vehicles were only a sparkle in the eye of a few military organizations. Transformational technologies often have long gestational periods, with the R&D (research and development) funded by defense organizations.” For five years, Clearpath’s funding came in part from defense contracts, but large companies in mining and other industries also became clients. In 2014, the company built their first prototype OTTO, a self-driving vehicle built to automate material movement inside busy factories and warehouses. “We did this three years before anyone else,” Mr. Rendall said.

OTTO is focused on material movement jobs like bringing raw materials to the line, cross docking pallets, and moving parts between processes. OTTO can reduce or eliminate labor spend on low-value work through innovative and flexible automation so manufacturers can redeploy their workers to higher-impact jobs.

The company got venture capital in 2015 to support productizing The OTTO Self-Driving Vehicle Platform. Crunchbase reports that the company has received a total of $41.2 million USD across two funding rounds. OTTO Motors was spun out of Clearpath with a tight focus on material handling applications. Clearpath continues to provide less productized robotic services for research companies.

Venture capitalists expect high growth from the companies they invest in. “Our aspiration is to double growth every year for the foreseeable future. That is a common growth profile for VC backed companies. We’ve been on this track since 2014,” Mr. Rendall stated. “It is possible to grow faster than that.” Growth is being fueled by the difficulty many companies are having hiring people to work in their warehouses or factories.

Mr. Rendall also pointed out that the automated guided vehicle market in the U.S. has grown to less than $200 million in thirty years. Bolted to ground warehouse automation has its limitations. “There is a pressing need for flexibility.” Take Amazon for example, their throughput at peak is 4 to 5 times what it is for most of the year. If a company like this sizes automation for the throughput they need five years from now during peak season, they are investing in a throughput capacity 10 to 15 times bigger than what they currently need. They better hope their assumptions are right.”

Their self-driving vehicles can be redeployed as processes change. If a Tier 1 automotive supplier gets a new contract, they need to retool the entire line. “It is hard to apply a dollar amount to flexibility. But I was on one panel where the question of how to price or quantify flexibility came up. One panelist cited a survey which said some industries are willing to pay a 30 percent premium for flexibility.” AGVs can be cost effective, Mr. Rendall asserts, but only in “simple” applications.

But how autonomous do vehicles that move pallets really need to be? Whereas robots that support ecommerce operations may navigate warehouses in an intricate orchestration that supports human pickers, do pallet moves really need to be that complex? In lean manufacturing operations, manufacturers have a specific time frame they are looking for material to be delivered to the line. If a robot picks a new path to avoid an obstacle, the desired sequence of material delivery to the line can be disrupted.

Mr. Rendall disagrees. “The supply chain inside an automotive plant is elegant from a process perspective. Kitting operations, where a kit is built for a specific station on a factory floor, can resemble order picking in ecommerce.” Further, the more products built on the same assembly line, the more the process requires multiple origin and destination points. “There is a large queue of potential pickup and drop off locations. A conveyor or AGV can’t do that.” Further, it is public information that Toyota, the father of lean in automotive, is a customer of theirs. “I wish we could talk about what our innovative clients are doing.”

This market is poised to grow explosively. That opens up some interesting opportunities for flexibility in the pricing of this technology. More than just Robots as a Service pricing, which will come to this market as surely as Software as a Service has come to dominate the enterprise software market. “We could deliver solutions that offer surge capacity for finite periods of time.”

While in many industries the seasonal surges occur during the runup to Christmas, and there might be somewhat limited opportunities to rebalance capacity during other times of the year, that matters less in a fast growing industry like robotics. “If you are growing, you bring the machines back and then send them to the next client that needs them.” With RaaS, if a machine breaks, the supplier provides a new one. Customers would be “buying productivity at a compelling price. This could be a model that works,” Mr. Rendall concluded.

No Driver Working Today Will Need to Change Careers Because of Autonomous Trucks

Logistics Technologies | By Steve Banker • 07/16/2018

Mike Reid, the Chief Operating Officer at Embark Trucks, said that “Anyone employed as a driver today will be able to retire as a driver.” What makes that statement surprising is that Embark is a leading developer of autonomous trucks. One might think that the goal of an autonomous truck company is to render drivers superfluous. The American Trucking Association estimates that there are approximately 3.5 million professional truck drivers in the United States. Mr. Reid made the statement eft’s 3PL and Supply Chain Summit on June 7^th.

autonomous trucks — Autonomous Truck from Embark

Crunchbase reports that San Francisco headquartered Embark has received $17.2 million in venture funding. Embark does not build trucks, it builds the AI-based software that will eventually allow trucks to drive autonomously. What does eventually mean? “The technology will come to market in the next five years” according to Mr. Reid.

The Embark model involves truckers driving to a marshalling yard near an Interstate highway. Then the trucks will drive the long-haul portion of the trip autonomously. At the end of the long haul, the truck pulls off the Interstate at another marshalling yard, a driver gets in, and the truck is driven the final miles to its destination.

Artificial Intelligence is used to train the software how to safely navigate on the Interstate. Embark has professional drivers sitting at the wheel actively monitoring the road, supervising the system, and ready to take control whenever they think the truck is responding too slowly to an impending situation. Embark will run millions of miles “training” in this manner to develop their technology.

The truck uses several sensors whose data is “meshed.” The different sensors are better in different kinds of driving conditions. Some sensors, for example, work better during the day, others at night. “Cyber security is a never-ending challenge,” Mr. Reid said. “But don’t forget cars (with drivers) can be hacked. We are taking a layered approach to cyber security, with firewalls between sub systems with an isolated layer responsible for safety critical controls at the core.”

A young driver with a job today, that wants to remain a driver throughout his career, will be able to keep his job for several reasons.

The Embark model will continue to require local drivers. “Training” trucks to operate safely in urban areas is an exceedingly difficult AI problem.
The rollout will be gradual, taking approximately 30 years. Embark is training their trucks on a few Interstates in the Southwest US where driving conditions are very favorable. But as more Interstates are added, more professional drivers will be needed for continuing training of the system. And as the rollout continues from the Southwest to other parts of the nation, where more complex conditions are present that can include snow and black ice, the training becomes more difficult.
The driver shortage is not going away. The demographics show that there are a high proportion of drivers close to retirement age. 2014 research from the American Transportation Research Institute (ATRI) showed that the average age of truckers was 52 and trucking companies report fewer and fewer young people working to become certified drivers. If anything, autonomous trucks can help draw more young workers into the field because there won’t be a need for as many long-haul drivers. Long-haul trucking is an arduous job, and a job that is not family friendly.
Finally, Mr. Reid said that “trends” show that freight will grow by about 30 percent over the decade. The ATRI research projected the need for hiring 100,000 new drivers per year to deal with the combination of retiring drivers and growth in freight.

In short, according to Mr. Reid the “narrative” that robots are about to eliminate large numbers of workers is not true, at least not in the trucking industry.

Shippers Caused the Truck Driver Shortage

Food & Beverage Industry | By Steve Banker • 06/19/2018

Land O’Lakes Chief Supply Chain Officer, Yone Dewberry, told an audience at eft’s 3PL and Supply Chain Summit in Atlanta in on June 6th, “We’ve created it” (the truck driver shortage). “As an industry” (shippers), “we’ve done this to ourselves.”

Driver Shortage — *Yone Dewberry, Chief Supply Chain Officer, Land O’ Lakes*

Land O’ Lakes is a member owned cooperative with revenues of $15 billion. The company is best known for dairy products, particularly butter, but the company also has divisions devoted to animal nutrition and seeds/crop protection. When it comes to securing carriage, it is easier if you have predictable demand, use standard trucks, and have long lead times. That does not fit any of their businesses.

The animal feed business does not have seasonal peaks, but 40 percent of deliveries are same day or next day. The dairy business has “huge peaks” according to Mr. Dewberry. 40 percent of butter is sold in November and December and needs to be transported in refrigerated trucks. “Getting refrigerated trucks during the busy season is tough.” Finally, the Ag service business is “peaky.” “When the weather gets warm, farmers want to plant. It is hard to “predict” these peaks. And when it rains, farmers are apt to ask for fungicides, and they want those fungicides delivered the same day. 80 percent of deliveries from this business are same or next day.

The trucker shortage is being driven by: unemployment rates being down which has created a positive consumer outlook and people buying more goods. It is definitely driven by demographics, “in the past ten percent of drivers were near retirement at any point in time, today it is 25 percent” said Mr. Dewberry. The ELD mandate has had an impact, but perhaps not as big as many argue. But a big reason for the shortage is that “we’ve forced our carriers to drive their prices down. Trucking companies don’t have many levers. There is fuel, carriers can’t control that. And there are driver wages.” For many years, driver wages were not keeping up with wage growth in other sectors.

So, there is a driver shortage. Companies are having a harder time maintaining existing service levels, much less moving to more demanding business to consumer ecommerce type expectations for quick deliveries. “5:00 to 9:00 bleeds over to 9:00 to 5.00” quipped Mr. Dewberry. By that he means that people go home at the end of the day, order on line, are promised quick deliveries, have choices on when and how goods are shipped, and have visibility to those shipments. Those expectations then carry over to the business environment.

So that is the problem, what is the solution. Land O’ Lakes is doing several things to deal with a tough freight environment. First of all, the company believes a focus on costs has been overblown. “We don’t generally talk about price (with carriers), we talk about how to solve a problem.”

With the ag supply business, they are making many shipments to rural areas served by small carriers that don’t have a lot of technology. Land O’Lakes has implemented a real-time transportation visibility solution from FourKites. Drivers can download an app, accept a load, and then have the shipment tracked via their smartphone. “We track every Purina shipment.” They are running pilots with FourKites to see whether predictive analytics surrounding weather – the data comes from the Weather Channel owned by IBM – and traffic can be used to better predict arrival times. Further, visibility can be used to pay drivers for all the work they do. If they are struck in traffic, and the visibility solution shows that, they can be paid for their time. If they are made to wait too long picking goods up at a warehouse, the visibility solution proves that, and they are paid for that as well.

Land O’Lakes is also running pilots with Uber Freight and Convoy. “Traditional brokerage is too slow.” These technologically sophisticated AI-based brokers might be a partial solution. But the experiment is young. “We don’t know if it will work.”

The company is also looking to partner with companies with private fleets. “Carriers fleets are at a 90 percent utilization level. Private fleets are only 50 to 60 percent utilized. We’ve found a few we can work with.” Eventually, finding loads while helping their partners eliminate empty backhauls will be made easier with technology.

Land O’Lakes wants to also test the feasibility of autonomous trucks. Their partner here is Uber Advanced Technologies. Self-driving trucks are not legal yet, but some states are allowing pilots to be run. Land O’Lakes would like to work with the Department of Transportation in Minnesota and Uber to begin testing certain lanes. “This might not happen for years,” Mr. Dewberry admits, “but we have to start somewhere.”

Finally, the company is working with industry groups like the Grocery Manufacturers Association and the Food Marketing Institute around participating in projects that can help alleviate this problem. For example, what if food manufacturers did not have to deliver to retailers on week days 9 to 5 but could smooth demand by delivering on weekends? A study could show how much capacity might free up.

In the current environment, partnering, new technologies, and experimentation makes sense. Land O’Lakes is clearly doing something right. They average 1,000 shipments per week. In the last year, only three shipments were left on the dock because of an inability to find a carrier willing to take the load.

Understanding What’s Behind the High Demand for Flatbed Shipping

Guest Commentary | By Adam McDonough • 06/07/2018

High demand for flatbed shipping is rolling mightily into the peak periods of summer, continuing to drive historic supply issues across North America.

While it’s difficult to predict how long it will last, what is predictable is that unprecedented demand of flatbed shipping will disrupt the typical cycles and seasonal trends we’ve come to expect, and make securing supply even more difficult as the market and carrier demographics remain fragmented.

Understanding what’s behind the demand surge provides perspective on things you can do to meet the challenge. Here are three factors contributing to the current situation:

Regulatory Changes—specifically ELDs

Flatbed carriers and drivers are feeling great impact from the Electronic Logging device (ELD) mandate for a variety of reasons.

Freight is often project-based with seasonal demand.This means carriers have limited opportunities to build a “freight network” or plan routes that optimize drive time.
Flatbed carrier demographics. Typically, carriers operate between 1-20 trucks and have 1:1 tractor-to-trailer ratios. This limits their ability to implement efficiency tactics such as drop trailer pools, driver relays, and slip seating.
Pickup and delivery locations. Job sites, ports, mills, and other unique places often result in longer dwell times for drivers.
Securing and protecting cargo.Securing and protecting a multitude of commodities that ship on open deck trailers is labor intensive, resulting in decreased drive time and yield to the truck.

Ongoing and future legislation changes

The current administration has proposed and passed legislation that will drastically impact flatbed shipping demand now and into the future, including:

Tax reform. In lieu of applying cash to the balance sheet, many corporations are making capital expenditures, which increase flatbed demand for hauling products for plant modernizations, Greenfield projects, machinery upgrades, and more.
Energy sector support. The administration is opening avenues for offshore oil drilling in many coastal regions across the U.S. This, coupled with the emergence of liquefied natural gas export activity and ongoing tax breaks for renewable wind energy, means that demand for flatbed will remain high in the energy sector.
$1.8 Billion Infrastructure Bill. This bill is not passed or funded yet, but improvements to our nation’s roads and bridges is a known need—one that would directly lead to more demand for flatbed equipment.
Steel/aluminum import tariff.Effective March 23, 2018, this tariff’s full implications remain to be seen. It’s likely we’ll see a disruption in capacity networks as less import activity and more inland steel production may drive higher demand and shift capacity away from ports.

Economic and industry influencers

Positive economic trends within specific industry sectors heavily influence the demand for flatbed shipping.

Oil and gas sector. With the price of oil improving (crude oil is north of $60/barrel), onshore and offshore drilling activity picking up, and more efficient operations, many are comparing today’s activity with what we saw in 2014 (when crude was $100+/barrel).
Industrial/agriculture machines.Tax reform will also influence commercial/industrial machine production as CAPEX is allocated to equipment upgrades. In addition, while commodity prices remain weak, growth in global population and aging equipment fleets are resulting in increased agriculture machine sales activity.
Manufacturing and automotive industry. Manufacturing continues to see positive trends contributing to GDP >3%. This will result in additional demand for many commodities hauled via flatbed.
Housing and Construction. The housing market continues to remain strong and the recovery efforts from last year’s catastrophic natural disasters are ramping up as insurance settlements are finalized. This will result in strong demand for building materials hauled via flatbed.

While the situation presents challenges for both shippers and carriers, it also presents opportunities to:

Evaluate and use your TMS: To review supplier score carding, route guide performance, vendor score carding, and KPI measures, and identify gaps where risk of supplier chain failure is imminent and course correct where applicable.
Leverage your buying power: Reevaluate decentralized transportation decision control vs. centralized. Is there room to improve forecasting, planning, and transportation purchasing across your holistic network of freight?
Align expectations of vendors/suppliers: Are they attractive shippers? How many other companies are purchasing from them and how is that freight procured? How can you make your freight stand out? Have they made changes to shipping that negatively impact your ability to secure capacity?
Define procurement strategy: Work with capacity providers to determine price, service, and commitment expectations of the business. Understand where risk of capacity failure exists, align process to mitigate soft costs and ensure accountability to execution. Diversify carrier strategy and define carrier loyalty where applicable.

The good news about high demand for flatbed shipping is the economy is robust, and both shippers and carriers can benefit. Your ability to understand and navigate the new shipping environment is critical to your success during this period and into the future.

As the Director of North American Flatbed, Adam leads C.H. Robinson’s flatbed service line strategy and initiatives across North America. He focuses on helping C.H. Robinson act as an industry leader in the flatbed space working across several industry sectors and a fragmented carrier community to create integrated and customized flatbed solutions. Adam is passionate about the carrier community as he grew up in transportation working for his family’s asset based LTL and flatbed trucking company and attained his CDL at age 19. Adam graduated from St. Cloud State University with a degree in business finance.

Lineage Logistics: A Data-Driven Approach to Cold Chain

Food & Beverage Industry | By Chris Cunnane • 06/06/2018

Towards the end of last year, Steve Banker and I met with Greg Lehmkuhl, President & CEO, Sudarsan Thattai, CIO, and Chris Timmer, SVP Sales and Value-Added Services from Lineage Logistics. The name Lineage Logistics may not be a household name, but that is something the leadership team is used to. However, Lineage, a mid-cap company based in Detroit, Michigan, is one of the world’s largest and most innovative temperature-controlled supply chain providers. The temperature-controlled supply chain, also known as cold chain, is used to keep products at specified temperatures to preserve food safety and, generally increase shelf life. The company operates over 120 facilities in four countries, with over 700 million cubic feet of storage. The company’s solutions include warehousing, managed transportation, re-distribution, high pressure processing, packaging, and more.

According to Lineage, one of the interesting components of the cold chain is the size of the market. While the market itself is huge, cost barriers make it difficult for new entrants to the market. Cold storage is significantly more expensive than dry storage due to energy, equipment and specialized insulated construction materials required to maintain ideal temperatures. The growth in demand for frozen and perishable foods has been rising for a decade, but investments in the cold chain were historically low due to the recession. With the economy recovering and demand rising, the industry is seeing more capital inflows – and people are paying attention.

One of the major challenges facing companies is the fact that it is difficult to achieve consistent utilization in warehouses due to the seasonality of food. In the warehouse, space is money, and operations need to be sustainable. The solution for Lineage was for its applied sciences team to take on the task of making the warehouses more efficient with the goal of driving sustainability. Namely, the applied scientists team created highly accurate models of the inside of warehouses, providing a sub-millimeter-accurate measurement. Using that data along with other inventory data, Lineage is able to optimize use of the warehouse resulting in both better utilization of the limited space along with more accurate movement of product to better serve customers.

Greg Lehmkuhl pointed out two distinct areas where Lineage was able to use its applied sciences team to improve operational efficiency and profitability: Sustainability and Energy.

Not surprisingly, in the cold chain, energy is a huge expense. The solution was to put sensors in their cold storage warehouses to monitor the temperature throughout. Using the sensors, Lineage was able to build a model to more accurately determine, track, and optimize the way energy is used to cool the warehouse. Lineage is working to take that knowledge a step further to automate, centrally control, and optimize energy use throughout its facilities to further maximize efficiencies.

The result was a solution that maximized energy consumption and reduced the total cost of energy to operate cold storage warehouses. Lineage has been able to do this by adjusting energy consumption based on energy prices while still ensuring that the temperature in the warehouse maintains compliance with customer temperature requirements. So how effective is this method? Last year, based on the amount of cold storage Lineage provided, energy costs should have risen 8 percent. Instead, due to their warehouse models, the company reduced its average cost per KWh by almost 10 percent.

Such energy optimization also helps Lineage better utilize intermittent, but renewable sources of electricity, such as wind turbines and solar panels.

The Lineage team shared one other interesting anecdote about how their applied sciences team was reducing energy consumption. Lineage stores more of the strawberries in the United States than any other warehouse. Historically, the strawberries have been put in a blast freezer to rapidly freeze them for an extended shelf life. With the 2015 bumper crop coming in, they simply couldn’t handle the increased capacity and freeze everything in time. So, they put the applied sciences team on the task again. The team created thermodynamic and aerodynamic models normally employed in the aerospace industry, creating new proprietary blast freeze technology in the process. As a result, Lineage was able to freeze strawberries in approximately 60% of the time as before, with commensurate energy savings and capacity increases.

The cold chain is a vital component to the food and beverage supply chain. With increased demand comes increased opportunity. However, much like every other market, technology innovation becomes a critical component to seizing these opportunities. Lineage is using a data-driven approach to improve efficiencies for how products are stored and how energy is consumed. The results speak for themselves, Lineage has managed to reduce energy costs while increasing throughput and density. This is a reminder of the importance of a data-driven approach to business.

A complete analysis of logistics trends, technologies, and services

Regulatory Changes—specifically ELDs

Ongoing and future legislation changes

Economic and industry influencers

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