If you happen to be in the Toronto area or are planning to attend the Distribution Logistics Summit in the first week of November in Toronto, Canada, I would like to invite you to attend the panel titled The Bionic Supply Chain.

Our CEO, Matt Yearling, will be hosting three seasoned executives to discuss how robots and advanced technologies are merging into day-to-day operations and helping organizations understand what it means to have a Bionic Supply Chain, and how this will affect you moving forward.

As markets demand not only efficiency but agility and flexibility from supply chains, next-generation models are successfully combining robotics, automation, and digital technologies to drive superior performance.

According to industry experts, there are two primary well-known forces driving investments in technology in the supply chain and logistics industry: Customer demands and workforce shortage. More recent challenges, such as the national warehouse vacancy rate hovering at record lows and warehouses bloated with inventory pulled in from China during 2018 to get ahead of impending tariffs, have emerged creating an even more demanding environment.

For these reasons, proper inventory management—accompanied by the ability to move inventory throughout the supply chain at a high velocity and lower cost—has become a must-have in today’s business climate.

Experts also agree that as autonomous robot hardware and software continue to improve over the next 10 years, robots can provide a competitive advantage for companies. Through improvements in sensors, dexterity, artificial intelligence, and trainability. However, the day when “robots take over the universe” isn’t coming anytime soon, but the idea of humans and robots working side by side is already coming to fruition in factories and on warehouse floors worldwide.

For companies that aren’t already using autonomous robots, for example, launching a strategy can be intimidating. It sounds expensive, for starters, and the idea of putting robots on an assembly line, in a warehouse, out on a dock, or in the yard can be downright daunting.

We will discuss how robots and advanced technologies are merging into day-to-day operations and helping organizations overcome the challenges above, what it means to have a Bionic Supply Chain, and how this will affect you moving forward.

Key takeaways:

• Understand how technology will enhance logistics productivity in the next 10 years and vice-versa.
• Present and discuss existing and potential cases.

Summary:

• The future of the workforce in warehouses and manufacturing plants.