Forklifts from space! Tell your kids.

The worst insult you could pay a warehouse manager is that his facility is a black hole. That implies a huge cosmic point of no return. Well if logistics can borrow scientific terminology to imply chaos on a cosmic order, why shouldn’t science be free to use a logistics glossary to bring cosmic theories down to earth?

It’s been done. Introducing Sunfall, a kind of outer-space warehouse management system developed for an astrophysics project called the Nearby Supernova Factory. This project represents a new way for scientists at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, CA, to discover and distribute information. Scientists at the Supernova Factory work in shifts, 24/7 to find supernovae (that’s more than one supernova to us unscientific types). Like inventory lost in a black hole, supernovae are hard to find without some kind of warehouse management system. And that’s just what this facility has in the brainpower running it. It also has a forklift.

This 24/7 scientific factory is charged with reliably “producing” supernovae, almost on a production line basis. They’ve turned a serendipitous event (spotting a supernova) into an industry with fine-tuned factory efficiency. One of its most important tools is a data forklift. Cecilia Aragon, one of the scientists on this project, told me why a forklift was the perfect image to support their factory theme.

“We came up with the term because our tool moves data around the world in a very efficient and predictable way, just like a real forklift in a warehouse would do,” she explained. “Some of this movement is on demand and some is scheduled.”

Efficiency and labor savings are common logistics denominators in Dr. Aragon’s world and in yours. She told me that when she and her colleagues started their “factory” project there were tasks that took six scientists four hours a day to do. These tasks were more operational than scientific. With their warehouse and forklift tools, it now takes one scientist one hour a day to do the same operational work. This allows the scientists more time to find the hidden storage locations of cosmic information.

“The golden equation is hidden inside all this data and we’re trying to find it,” Dr. Aragon concluded. She and her colleagues have found cosmic inspiration in the earthbound tools we in materials handling take for granted.

So the next time your kid asks you to explain what you do for a living, see if you can tap into the same source of inspiration Aragon found. The art and science of materials handling needs constant rediscovery.

Tom Andel
tandel4315@aol.com