Between Picnic and Phone Orders: The Strange State of Online Grocery
Over the past ten years, online grocery has developed into my home turf. Ten years ago, online grocery was a relatively obscur industry. People knew, or assumed, it existed, but…
Mobile Picking Robots: The Rationale and Pitfalls
Mobile picking robots are increasingly marketed as a flexible automation solution. But they often automate inefficiency at a high cost. Here's a critical analysis.
The End of Spare Parts Logistics as We Know It. And Nobody Talks About It.
Management Summary Additive Manufacturing (AM), often referred to as 3D printing, has long been hyped as a revolutionary technology in manufacturing. But I claim its transformative potential in spare parts…
Automation Won’t Solve Your Problems
This post explains why so many warehouse automation problems, and poor financial performance of automation projects, have little to do with the technology itself—and everything to do with poor process,…
The Warehouse Engineering Podcast #7: The Risk of Large Projects
One of the earliest texts I published here dates back to 2019 and is titled The Risk of Large Projects. In it, I argued that large-scale automation projects are inherently…
Robotic Piece Picking: Anatomy of a Broken Business Model
This article is about the broken business model of robotic piece picking companies. If you are looking for the broken business model of Q-commerce companies, please read this article or…
The Warehouse Engineering Podcast #5: Gili Ovadia of BionicHIVE
It is not that long ago that friends and colleagues sent me the same video several times a day: A robot drives through the warehouse, then climbs up a seemingly…
LogiMAT 2024 Recap & Gebhardt Instapick
https://youtu.be/-9zXG_7k-YQ?si=55fLjFlsfpgGDiK7 LogiMAT 2024 is over – and it was great! In this video I summarize some impressions and also say a few words about Instapick, the Gebhardt Group's new storage…
There is no Such Thing as “Sustainable Logistics”
I would like to say a few words on the subject of "sustainable logistics". The combination of "sustainability" and "logistics" is quite widespread. Google delivers almost 62,000 hits for the…
MODEX and LogiMAT 2024: What’s there to see?
MODEX has just ended, LogiMAT begins next week. As always, the exhibitors – the industry is represented almost in its entirety – are busy advertising and vying for the attention…
