ProMatDX Day 4: Making DC Workflows Better with IoT

Fulfillment centers are faced-paced environments where knowing which materials are where via sensor-based, Internet of Things (IoT) technologies can reduce errors in critical processes like outbound shipments. Sponsors at PromatDX say that tech like radio frequency identification (RFID) and IoT can do things like ensure the right loads get placed onto the right trucks, without having to go through extra data capture steps.

Using RFID tags on outbound pallets labels is a good, targeted application of RFID and IoT technologies because it can eliminate costly errors, points out Peter Zalinski, director of partner solutions with Barcoding, Inc., which provides various mobile data computing products from multiple OEMs, as well as deploys RFID and IoT solutions.

Today’s label printers can encode an RFID tag onto the shipment label placed onto an outbound pallet (typically within the load’s shipping label), while a RFID reader portal at the dock door can automatically detect labels and alert operators if a pallet is being placed on the wrong truck. “It’s a good targeted application for RFID,” Zalinski says. “You’re not RFID enabling your entire warehouse. You are RFID enabling at the labelling point, and at the dock doors, and the workers aren’t changing their workflow.”

Other good candidates for RFID location tracking include tagging valuable equipment or reusable containers, or in some manufacturing settings, materials such as rolls of paper, adds Zalinski. Some mobile computing device vendors also offer software for device management and edge usage insights that users can leverage for accessing visual metrics and insights such as increases in devices being dropped, or unusual lag times between scan activity. All of this can be done with standard technology in rugged mobile computing devices, along with software solutions from some of the device OEMs, says Zalinski.

Zebra Technologies, a vendor of rugged mobile computer, printers, wearables, RFID, and other edge technologies, helps companies with visibility solutions that improve key processes in warehouse fulfillment, says Mark Wheeler, director of Supply Chain Solutions with Zebra. Some of these, such as the Smart Pack Trailer solution it introduced in 2017 at ProMat, are more targeted. That solution captures operational data such as load density, trailer fullness, images of loads in progress and the number of packages scanned and loaded per hour, using 3D sensors and camera technology that feeds data to analytics software.

A broader sensor-based visibility solution from Zebra, introduced last year, is called MotionWorks Warehouse. It features Zebra’s ATR7000 RTLS readers and passive RFID tags to provide real-time asset movement information. It can integrate with and send alerts to a company’s warehouse management system (WMS).

Overall, explains Wheeler, modernizing warehouses can be seen as a progression through a maturity model, with the more advanced stages benefitting from “constant visibility” over goods, assets, and human resources, as opposed to the phase of “inferred visibility,” when what an operation knows is limited by being based on the most recent scan.

Once deployed, explains Wheeler, real-time locating, RFID, and similar solutions can complement systems like WMS to make warehouse processes more adaptive. “When you have constant visibility into basically everything in a facility, you can build rules based on that visibility, and start to apply artificial intelligence and machine learning to all that granular, real-time data coming in. Not only will this make systems more efficient, it will make them more adaptable.”

IoT’s other big play in warehousing is around predictive maintenance for automated systems. Many major warehouse automation system vendors support this need, which has become even more acute in the past year due to travel and safety restrictions during the pandemic, making it necessary for vendors to excel at preventative maintenance, as well as remote monitoring and fine-tuning of systems.

The ability of warehouse automation vendors to be able to tie into machine controls remotely, and feed data into predictive analytic software, is a big part of the value add that automation vendors offer today, observes Mike Stein, VP of Marketing and Product Management, Automation and Packaging Technologies Platform, Signode, a vendor of end-of-line automation solutions, which at ProMatDX, was featuring StorFast, its automated storage and retrieval system (ASRS).

“We are doing more and more with predictive maintenance,” says Stein. “We want to be able to tell our technician, ‘on this next preventative maintenance visit, make sure to check this other trend that is starting to be a concern, before it has the chance to turn into a problem.”

For those wanting to learn more about IoT, ProMatDX offered plenty of other content and sponsors involved in the trend. Additionally, MHI’s Annual Industry report released yesterday, indicates that IoT applications are no longer rare, and should become more widely deployed the next couple of years. This year’s MHI Industry report, which can be downloaded here, found that 27% of supply professionals surveyed say their organizations already make use of industrial IoT, and another 27% plan to within one to two more years.