Game on for lights out

Close your eyes and join me for a walk in the manufacturing facility of the future. Or actually, don’t close your eyes – most of the tour will be in pitch darkness anyway.

During this short tour, we will explore what already enables us to turn off the lights, where and why we still need pockets of lights today, and what it will take to eliminate them.

Our tour begins in the warehouse. It may surprise some of you, but running a warehouse without lights has theoretically been possible for around 40 years now. This is due to a very simple invention: the pallet. 

As long as goods are on a good quality pallet, we can store, retrieve and handle it completely automatically using an AS/RS solution.

Shine a light on quality control

Of course, a warehouse only brings value when there is an in- and outflow of goods, so let us first move to the receiving area, where the need for people requires us to have pockets of light today.

Here, we see people on forklifts loading and unloading trucks. Let us not focus too much on them – technology is evolving, and soon it will mature enough to let autonomous mobile robots handle these tasks.

The other pocket of light behind us is more interesting. That is where the quality check takes place. We might see a tiny bit of stretch wrap foil sticking out of the pallet, a loose slip sheet, a pallet packed with uneven layers or damaged packaging and products – all the things that any automated system doesn’t like and where we need people to detect and correct the problems before it results in downtime in the warehouse operations.

Let us put that in past tense: We needed people. Because with new digital and AI tools from Körber such as the Operator Eye, we can already dim the lights here. Perhaps not turn it off completely because our digital tools rely on cameras.

Our AI solution is able to differentiate between deviations that may cause problems, and deviations that are not harmful for the system. This approach greatly reduces the need for interventions. Additionally, our customers are now able to identify the root cause of downtime errors, increase operational efficiency and reduce the amount of damaged goods. Our digital tools can also help us with identifying the wrong master data of products handled in the warehouse.

Let us continue our tour into an area that typically has more lights on.

Questioning the processes

We are walking down to one of the production lines in the factory. This specific line is a packaging line that will automatically label, pack and palletize the primary products.

The primary materials arrive at one end – typically on pallets. And as mentioned above, bringing the pallet to the production line can be done automatically, in the dark, by Autonomous Mobile Robots. 

However, this is where the complexity starts. Stretch wrap foil needs to be removed, cartons will need to be taken of the pallets and opened. And the goods inside these cartons then need to be precisely placed inside the machine.

All these steps could be handled by AMRs, robots or in the case of removing straps, wrapping, and opening cartons, by special material handling equipment.

In other words, you could turn the lights off. The problem is that each of these actions requires its own equipment, which is costly to implement at every production line. Not only in terms of the equipment itself but also in terms of the space it requires, and most of the equipment would be underutilized. 

To solve this, we need to question how we organize these activities, or more importantly, the way we collaborate in the supply chain.

The formula for lights out

Because who says goods need to arrive in your production room on pallets, in cartons, wrapped in foil and with a strap around it? Who says we can’t move processes upstream in our facility, or even to our suppliers, so goods arrive in a format that feeds easier into your production line? For example, consider a central depalletizing area from where goods are transported to the production line in cartons, instead of on pallets.

Or ask your supplier to provide goods in trays that can easily be handled by your machines. Maybe these trays could even be re-usable and therefor more sustainable too.

We need all these ideas to enable Lights Out. Therefore, the formula for lights out in the warehouse looks something like this:

Lights out = Technology x Interfaces x Processes.

The technology to enable lights out is already there. Yet, to make it economically feasibly to apply, you will need to evaluate and adapt your processes.

The other element is interfaces. It is where things are handed over from one supplier to the next, and from one machine to another. This is where we need to develop partner ecosystems to make machines, processes and handling units more compatible.

Running a warehouse in total darkness can undoubtedly be good business under the right circumstances, but we always need to evaluate the cost versus the benefit to make sure it creates the right value.

We are ready to evaluate any company’s circumstances and serve as a partner to find the right level of automation to suit their needs. Are you? Game on!