The doors of the NEC opened this morning [19 March 2024] and Robotics and Automation 2024 is well underway. Lucas Systems, exhibiting at Stand 454, is putting its focus on AI-optimised picking processes at the exhibition.
According to Lucas Systems, while many advancements have been made in building efficiency and accuracy into picking processes, the optimised way of picking cannot be achieved by humans; there are simply too many decision points and too much data.
Instead, the company proposes, this is the kind of problem that AI excels at solving.
Rick Day, business development executive at Lucas Systems, said: “Applying advanced machine learning algorithms, AI-driven software can offer nearly real-time optimisation for things like batching, pick paths and slotting to drive game-changing enhancements in productivity and accuracy.”
He added: “AI-based software solutions can supercharge operational gains in a non-disruptive, efficient way that shortens time to value. This provides a better alternative to solving your operational and labour challenges than traditional automation solutions, which can be long, complicated and expensive.”
Speaking to Robotics & Automation Magazine at Stand 454, James Hart, business development manager at Lucas Systems, explained: “Over the past 12 months, one of the modules that has really been progressing and really gaining a lot of interest within our customer base is our dynamic slotting module.
“It uses artificial intelligence to understand the velocity of products, the affinity between products, how products are batched together and executed together and takes into account the seasonality, dimensions and various compatibility requirements of all of the products to understand based on your current layout and current configuration of your operation, what products should be moved to a more efficient location…
“Slotting is something that’s really gaining a lot of traction. We’ve had a lot of interest over the years in our travel optimisation from this show and I think slotting this year is going to be the one that tries to match that.”
On the role of AI within such modules, Hart said: “All of the algorithms behind the scenes for the travel optimisation and slotting optimisation [modules] use artificial intelligence. It’s crunching a huge amount of data in a short period of time and making the most intelligent decisions about what it’s going to do, using not only the current reality in front of it but also learning from some of those aspects of seasonality and the ways in which assignments have been created on the floor previously.”
Hart shared his belief that the use of AI in logistics appears to be growing by the day, noting that “it certainly is getting far more intelligent”. He says: “We’re already seeing from our customer base that people want to rely on the logic that systems provide, rather than rely on an individual’s intelligence and experience.”
He also said that he feels the proliferation of AI technology within the daily lives of the general public has gone some way to making people more comfortable with AI and, as a result, more likely to trust it within a business context.
Lucas Systems’ James Hart and Rick Day also gave a presentation at the IntraLogisteX conference theatre entitled “Transform warehouse operations with AI-optimised decision-making”.
The session covered how optimisation software can provide agility and flexibility for rapidly changing network fulfilment needs; how intelligent batching, path optimisation and dynamic prioritisation techniques can be a game changer for a distribution centre’s workforce; and how software-based solutions can supercharge operational gains in a non-disruptive, efficient way that shortens time to value.
If you missed the session and are attending the second day of the exhibition, you can catch it again tomorrow [20 March 2024] at 11:40am.
For more from the IntraLogisteX conference theatre, keep an eye out on the Logistics Manager website for highlights from day one and two of the exhibition.
Hart shared his enthusiasm for the days ahead, saying: “[Robotics and Automation and IntraLogisteX] is definitely bigger than previous years. The conference theatres are probably about twice the size, which is excellent because we were standing room only for some of our session last year, so we’re looking forward to that and just having the same high-quality conversations with the right people as we always have every year at this exhibition.”
