DC Velocity - February 2017

S tra te g y MO B I LE T E CH

BARRIERS TO ADOPTION

Material handling operations see a bright future for wearables and mobile technology, with 75 percent of the industry looking to adopt this technology in the warehouse within six to 10 years, according to the 2016 MHI Annual Industry Report, “Accelerating change: How innovation is driving digital, always-on supply chains.” However, the survey showed that current rates of adoption lag far behind that at just 26 percent. Produced by MHI and Deloitte Consulting, the study was based on responses from nearly 900 manufacturers, distributors, service providers, and other industry players.

As for what accounts for the lag in adoption rates, the survey found that with emerging technologies in general—a class that includes robotics, sensors, drones, cloud computing, and 3-D printing as well as smartglasses—the major barrier to investment is the lack of a clear business case to justify the cost ( 43 percent of respondents). That was followed by the lack of talent to utilize new technology effectively ( 38 percent) and a cultural aversion to risk ( 35 percent).

For smartglass wearables in particular, barriers to adop-
tion include the need for smaller, more powerful batteries;
the high price of smartglass hardware in comparison with
tablets and smartphones; and the difficulties of software
integration with back-end platforms like customer rela-
tionship management (CRM), inventory management,
accounting, or enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems,
the MHI study found.

Despite those challenges, a growing number of companies are launching smartglass warehouse pilots. In most cases, these trials are aimed at identifying applications that will provide the quickest return on investment (ROI), according to Jay Kim, chief strategy officer at Upskill, a Herndon, Va., firm that makes a wearable software platform called Skylight that powers many smartglass hardware products.

So far, he said, smartglass technology is producing the best results in warehouse picking applications, where mistakes tend to be very expensive. Prime candidates for smartglass use include operations that handle a low volume of high-value parts and high-throughput third-party e-commerce fulfillment operations.

Other applications in which smartglass technology has delivered a swift ROI include training seasonal DC workers and streamlining maintenance operations, Kim said.

POISED FOR TAKEOFF

Smartglass technology might be in limited use today, but that may soon change. Smartglass and AR technology is advancing quickly, and logistics will probably be one of the first industries to reap the benefits, said Eric Abbruzzese, a senior analyst with ABI Research, a London-based tech-

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