Technology That Counts
VISIT US AT
BOOTH #853
Rent-a-Robot: Coming to a fulfillment
center near you
Warehouse automation startup
inVia Robotics Inc. has unveiled a
pair of mobile order-picking robots
that it will make available for lease,
a move inVia said would allow
retailers to compete with Amazon.
com Inc.’s giant fulfillment network
without breaking the bank.
InVia will offer the robots on
lease-based payment terms so com-
panies can adjust the size of their
robot fleets to meet peak demand
and then scale back again in the
off season. The robots carry items
from warehouse shelves to packing
stations, where human employees
can package them for home deliv-
ery. InVia calls the system “goods
to box” and says it can operate in
any warehouse without the need to
reconfigure stocking or floor plans.
In practice, inVia’s solution works
much like an automated storage and
retrieval system (AS/RS), but it can
be set up for a much lower price,
said inVia CEO Lior Elazary. The
savings come because inVia’s products integrate easily with a facility’s warehouse management system
(WMS), do not require redesign of
warehouse shelving and floor plans,
and can be paid off through a lease-based “Robotics as a Service” business model, Elazary said.
InVia customers pay a fee of about
10 cents per pick to oper- p. 20
If upheld in court, the ELD mandate
is expected by many to cause significant
attrition, as the owner-operators that are
the backbone of the nation’s truck fleet
deem the costs and the alleged invasion of
their privacy to be too onerous and leave
the business. However, the trade group
representing owner-operators—which
succeeded once already in turning back
the mandate—has challenged it again, this
time on constitutional grounds. Should
the group prevail—and several observers
consider it a long shot—capacity concerns
would likely be shelved for the near term.
Meanwhile, several 3PLs, acting on
behalf of shippers, have developed “
scorecards” to rate the performance and behavior of shippers and carriers. Transplace,
for one, has rated a handful of big shippers
in its managed-transportation unit by
gauging their behavior through the eyes
of their carriers, according to Sanderson.
Large 3PLs are building scorecards that
evaluate shippers and carriers at the same
time, said Ken Harper, director of marketing at DAT Solutions LLC, a consultancy.
He said there are financial incentives for
shippers to be rated a “shipper of choice”
and for carriers to be designated a “carrier
of choice,” but he did not elaborate.
Harper added that the scorecard process, which had been used to analyze contractual relationships, is expanding into
the spot market, with brokers rating their
carriers. Though it may seem unusual to
drill down into what is a purely transactional relationship, the spot market’s
growing relevance—more than one-quarter of truckload freight moves this way—
means that brokers will be using the same
carriers multiple times and want to gain
insight into the needs of shippers buying
on the spot market.
For his part, Harper believes that the
days of the large publicly traded carriers
getting beaten down on rates are largely
over. “According to our data, contract rates
are starting to rise as carriers cherry-pick
the routes and dump the unprofitable
freight onto the spot market,” he said in
an e-mail.
—M.S.
