DC Velocity - April 2016

Material handling company Intelligrated has launched a software application that it said uses data analytics to help firms efficiently manage the maintenance of material handling equipment, a move the company said allows it to enter a niche alongside such rivals as SAP SE and Dematic Corp.

The Mason, Ohio-based company’s “Intelligrated Reliability Intelligence Solution” (IRIS) targets the market for computerized maintenance management software (CMMS).

Software providers likes SAP, Dematic, Hippo CMMS, and Maintenance Assistant Inc. provide CMMS platforms for sectors such as manufacturing tools, air conditioning, building maintenance, and fork-lift fleets. CMMS software platforms allow users to maximize uptime for equipment by tracking hardware, forecasting repairs, managing spare parts, and using predictive analytics to forecast future problems. This, in turn, helps users trim their repair costs.

The new IRIS version of CMMS offers those features as well, but the platform is customized for material handling equipment sold only by Intelligrated, the company said.

By focusing on that specific suite of material handling equipment, IRIS can draw from a “deep pool” of historical data generated both by the equipment inside a user’s own facility and by the material handling equipment in all Intelligrated installations, the company said. That access to a large volume of maintenance and performance records allows Intelligrated to analyze the big data and generate customized predictions of the specific equipment used in each DC.

“Today’s distribution operations rely on automated systems to most efficiently meet ambitious business goals of increasingly high throughput and accuracy,” John Sorensen, senior vice president and general manager for lifecycle support services at Intelligrated, said in a statement. “IRIS offers the capability to inform and execute strategic, proactive lifecycle-management programs to help operations maximize asset performance and return on investment.”

Parcel-fulfillment firm Bell and Howell LLC and its Estonian partner Cleveron have unveiled an intelligent locker for parcel dropoff and pick-up, with plans to distribute the structure throughout the U.S.

Cleveron, with headquarters in Viljandi, Estonia, builds the “PackRobot” intelligent locker, which is widely used in Europe for consumer parcel deliveries. The companies teamed up in 2015 with the goal to bring the system to the U.S.

The North American market has the potential to install 15,000 parcel terminals in the next five years, sparked by rising consumer expectations for quick delivery and a surge in parcel volumes, the firms say.

The PackRobot platform has triple the parcel storage capacity of other lockers because it measures each parcel’s dimensions, configures a delivery slot to fit that size, then uses a 3-D lift to deliver the parcel to the assigned delivery slot, Cleveron says. That means the tower does not waste storage space compared with lockers that fit inducted parcels into preset locker sizes.

Customers retrieve their items by visiting a tower either indoors or outdoors, then using a smartphone app to identify themselves and claim the parcel. The terminals are installed at 800 locations across Europe, with more than 61,000 lockers delivering 450,000 parcels each month, Bell and Howell CEO Ramesh Ratan said in a statement.