Swisslog has various ideas. In communal warehouses, consignments of goods are pre-consolidated across service providers, which is already crowned with success on the outskirts of metropolitan areas. The transport to the inner cities is bundled and thus prevents overloading of the roads. Apart from more compact warehousing, new delivery methods would have to be tested, including drones, robots, delivery taxis and freight bicycles. And all these systems must also be organised accordingly, with Swisslog relying on the analysis of huge databases.
With the in-house SynQ software, the Swiss company makes processes more transparent and reduces maintenance and repair costs. In the Cockpit Manager, for example, operating procedures are visualised in 3D in real time. With the help of such digital shadows, the current and the expected performance can be simulated.
Smart cities are smart opportunities
However great these challenges may be, KUKA also sees them as opportunities. Logisticians can experiment with which factors need to be networked and how, so that goods can reach any point in the world within 24 hours. This could be achieved through minimised delivery routes, shared depots and intelligent traffic control - it is exciting to see what the future has in store.