Futurist's focus
By Staff -- Modern Materials Handling, 12/1/1999
Gazing toward tomorrow is present day strategy for Art St. Onge. President of St. Onge Company, he's long been regarded as a futurist in materials handling.Retail distribution where continuous replenishment is a key factor and manufacturing that is based on mass customization are trends that will continue to grow early in the next century, suggests St. Onge. They offer new opportunities to materials handling system suppliers.
But a number of established companies in the industry seem content to do business as usual rather than respond to these new challenges. Not so with nontraditional equipment vendors: "Companies outside our industry recognize the opportunity and are prototyping exciting new technologies," St. Onge says. His company is helping them pioneer applications such as one involving advanced robotics for order line replenishment and order picking.
"There's an emerging retail supply chain channel with a diminishing time frame for replenishment of demand," St. Onge explains. Continuous restocking becomes necessary. This process must respond to collaborative forecasting of consumer demand based on shared, real-time point-of-sale data. Replenishment down to specific region and to individual stores must occur, depending upon specific demographics.
Cases and individual piece items must be handled in these retail DCs . It's an extremely labor-intensive process. Similarly, manufacturing companies relying upon e-commerce, direct-to-consumer delivery channels, and mass customization have much the same in handling challenges, St. Onge suggests. "Their distribution operations look like the old catalog firms. Piece handling represents 50% to 70% of the costs of order fulfillment. It's their Achilles heel."
These applications will be "ripe for affordable automation," he says, "and economical solutions will be coming on line."
Futurism was nurtured years ago. "My father and his partner, Al Ruff, encouraged creative and imaginative thinking on my part," recalls St. Onge. That was back in 1963 when he began his career with St. Onge Ruff.
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