DC Velocity - January 2016

inbound

With an eye toward attracting next-generation workers to careers in logistics and recognizing top talent among young professionals, the industry group MHI has launched a campaign to find the 2016 Face of the Supply Chain.

The award will go to a supply chain professional whose personal story demonstrates the hard work, creative thinking, and commitment to innovation required to succeed in the industry.

MHI created the contest as part of an effort called #i WorkIn TheSupplyChain that is intended to change the perception of jobs in manufacturing and the supply chain and to illustrate their challenging and rewarding nature.

Visit www.iworkinthesupplychain.com by Feb. 15 to share your story and join the inspiring entries for the 2016 Face of the Supply Chain contest, or browse the site anytime to view videos, worker biographies, and personal testimonials. MHI leaders will announce the winning entry at the Modex 2016 trade show, which takes place April 4–7 in Atlanta.

Any material handling professional can testify that the simple pallet is one of the unsung heroes of the logistics world.

In November, an international drug smuggling ring took advantage of the humble pallet’s low profile when members molded thousands of pounds of raw cocaine into fake wooden pallets in an effort to import the narcotic from Colombia into Spain.

Fortunately, Spanish police were waiting. In a seizure at the Port of Valencia, they cut the locks on a shipping container that was purported to carry charcoal sacks on gray-colored pallets, according to

The Telegraph (U.K.).

The shipment included some 12 tons of legitimate charcoal being shipped to a Spanish front company, but police intelligence and sharp-nosed sniffer dogs picked out the false pallets and confiscated about 3,300 pounds of the powdery drug, worth an estimated $350 million. The drug bust has led to 11 arrests in five countries and allowed authorities to shut down an industrial-sized drug production lab, the newspaper reports.

Are you the “Face of the Supply Chain”?

Spanish cops seize cocaine pallets

DC VELOCITY recently visited Japan as guests of Daifuku Co. Ltd. and had a chance to preview some material handling solutions that have not yet made their way to the U.S.

We’ll be writing more in the coming months about the innovations we observed in the Land of the Rising Sun, but for now, here are just three of the unusual products we saw during visits to a customer site and Daifuku’s unique “Hini Arata Kan,” a three-story full-scale demonstration facility.

The SPDR. The SPDR (pronounced “spider”) was developed to handle temporary storage, sortation, and retrieval of parts for the auto industry but has applications in other industries as well. A large control box with a flexible grasping “leg” hanging below perches, spider-like, on a girder that allows four-direction-al movement as the unit scoots along an elevated rail mounted on support columns. As it moves around a storage area, the SPDR slides until it is positioned directly above the desired location. The leg then picks up totes or cases from the floor and delivers them to a conveyor. The system also works in reverse, stacking incoming cases and totes on an open floor, and repositioning them for just-in-time delivery to the manufacturing line. Daifuku says it is the first such system to handle items of varying sizes. ( www.daifuku.com/solution/tech-nology/spdr/)

Eye-navi. This unusual, highly flexible pick-to-light system attaches to individual trays or boxes. A picking tote or tray, an RFID tag, and a wireless pick-to-light display travel together, allowing users to sort items into the collection trays or boxes as they move along a front-aligned conveyor. ( www.daifuku-logisticssolutions.com/ en/product/picking/ eye-navi.html)

Aisle-opening mobile rack. This space-saving system designed for slow-moving items includes fixed pallet racks at either end and movable racks on dollies in between; the dollies slide apart to open an aisle where needed. Aisle width can be varied to accommodate lift trucks and pallets or manual case picking. The racks come with several safety features, including sensor eyes that detect entry and exit of forklifts and workers, and a safety lock that prevents rack movement while an order picker is in an aisle. ( www.daifuku-logisticssolutions.com/en/ product/rack-system/ mobile-rack.html)