The MFGWatch 2019 Manufacturing Report was based on a survey completed by both sourcing professionals and custom manufacturers who have used the MFG.com Global Custom Manufacturing Marketplace to expand their supply chain and win business.

Among the MFGWatch 2019 highlights:

• Business is growing. Suppliers plan to increase staff in 2019 to keep up with demand, with more than 44 percent saying they will invest in their workforce and acquire new technology. While 34 percent of buyers will focus more on technology infrastructure and not the workforce, an almost equal number (33 percent) plans to increase both this year.
• Despite growth, there are concerns. Fifty percent of suppliers agreed that the availability of materials is an issue, with 44 percent citing tariffs as a stumbling block. On the buyer side, tariffs and shipping costs (i.e., logistics) were key areas affecting their supply chain strategies, both coming in at around 42 percent. Interestingly, tariffs weren’t indicated on the last MFGWatch survey published just three years earlier. The growing gap in skilled workers was also a key concern.
• Companies are sourcing in the United States. Almost 90 percent of buyers and sourcing professionals cited the United States as their company’s primary sourcing destination for manufacturing their products. However, of those that are sourcing overseas, 79 percent have made no change to bring production back to North America from lower-cost countries.

Other signs of prosperity

Sixty-five percent of responding supplier companies said they received more work in 2018 than in the previous year—a huge jump from the MFGWatch 2016 results of 40 percent. Additionally, over 50 percent said their available capacity increased in 2018 while over one-third (37 percent) said it stayed the same year over year. Similarly, 61 percent of suppliers said they experienced an increase in RFQs in 2018, suggesting that the trend continues for buyers actively looking to source custom parts through American suppliers. Only 12 percent of suppliers surveyed saw a decrease in RFQs.

Sourcing professionals also indicated that their companies experienced growth in 2018 (57.6 percent), a jump from 47 percent in the previous MFGWatch report. Forty-one percent of buyers increased their supplier base in 2018 while 38 percent kept the same number of suppliers year over year

Who is represented in MFGWatch 2019

Although survey respondents came from a fairly even mix of industries, on the supplier side, consumer products and machinery tools & equipment were the largest represented groups, each at 31 percent. It was a similar situation on the buyer side, with 30 percent of respondents identifying themselves as being in the consumer products industry. Machinery tools & equipment came in third at 24 percent, just behind the general “other” industry category at 26 percent. The vast majority of respondents are also considered small businesses, employing between two and 50 employees. Just under 6 percent of responding suppliers and 14 percent of buyers employ more than 500 people.

Download the complete MFGWatch 2019 Manufacturing Report here.

When MHI released the 2019 Annual Industry Report, “Evaluating Supply Chain Digital Consciousness,” developed in conjunction with Deloitte Consulting LLP and at ProMat 2019, the publication included a self-assessment for benchmarking of digital consciousness. Intended as a way to help companies better understand both their degree of awareness and of their own progress in achieving a Digital Supply Chain, the assessment is now available as a free, online tool called the Supply Chain Digital Consciousness Index (DCI).

The Supply Chain DCI was introduced as a direct acknowledgement of the report’s determination that although many supply chain leaders recognize that the digital supply chain is in their futures, they may lack the mindset required to make that future a reality.

“We felt it was important for readers of the report to have a tool they could use to quickly assess their organization’s digital mindset, as well as to gauge their progress on the journey through the four stages of technology adoption,” says George Prest, CEO of MHI.

“Therefore, we developed a self-assessment tool for assessing your supply chain digital consciousness index based on four levels of awareness across five categories,” he continues. “We expect that supply chain leaders will find it useful and share it organization-wide to help their companies gain a better understanding of where they currently are in the context of where they want to be.”

The Report first defines a pyramid of digital adoption that has four technology stages, starting with the collection of data through digital connectivity, and then moving up the pyramid to generate increasing supply chain value and insights from that base data through automation, advanced analytics, and ultimately artificial intelligence.

The self-assessment then asks readers to rate their awareness level with one of four classifications (dormant, developing, heightened or elevated) within five separate categories (talent, workplace environment, innovation/technology, customer engagement and leadership) in a quick, two-page format.

This framework can help companies understand their current level of digital adoption and then identify gaps and next steps to boost digital consciousness and supply chain performance. The Supply Chain DCI quantifies the current level of supply chain digital consciousness, as well as measures progress made toward desired end-state. The intent is to help firms determine the current state of their digital consciousness, then prioritize gaps in order to develop a comprehensive strategy for digital consciousness that meets their unique business goals.

In a recent MHI Solutions magazine article about the 2019 MHI Annual Industry Report, Annette Danek-Akey, Senior Vice President of Supply Chain at Penguin Random House discussed the importance of the measurement tool to her operation.

“I love the self-assessment,” Danek-Akey says. “I timed myself when I completed it, and it only took me five minutes, so there are no excuses for not using that tool.”

While Danek-Akey says her survey score didn’t reveal any surprises, it did validate and reinforce what she already knew about her operation. Backed by her company’s leadership and existing corporate culture, workforce satisfaction is one of her top priorities.

“I’ve put tremendous focus on talent, workplace environment and leadership, so I expected to score on the higher end of the spectrum there,” she explains. “But in our operations, I truly believe that you have to focus on those areas first before you can tackle innovation, technology and customer engagement. If you have the right people, then it’s far easier to focus on the other digital elements.”

To complete the Supply Chain DCI, click here.

Strong demand and tight supply define industrial property sector in markets around the world.

Last-mile logistics fuel more adaptive reuse projects

E-commerce remains the industrial sector’s catalyst for success as retailers and developers strive to perfect the supply chain.

Online giants such as Amazon are impacting market dynamics in terms of scale and location with their demand for large distribution/fulfillment facilities near urban centers, resulting in rising land and development costs amid dwindling supply of developable land.

The largest U.S. markets remained extremely healthy and landlord-favorable while emerging markets in the South and West registered wide-ranging development and leasing growth during the past 12 months.

The average U.S. industrial vacancy rate was unchanged at 5% compared with one year earlier.

Despite the strong leasing market indicators, the lack of vacant and available space limited growth opportunities; as a result, net absorption was down 19% year-over-year to 195 million square feet.

Investment volume climbed to $54.9 billion in the 12 months ending in first quarter 2019, compared with $50.5 billion for the prior 12 months with demand for product surging and many new entrants trying to get a foothold in the asset class.

Notable First Quarter 2019 Industrial Market Highlights

• Canada: E-commerce remains the industrial sector’s catalyst for success as retailers and developers strive to perfect the supply chain.
• United States: Last-mile logistics fuel more adaptive reuse projects
• Mexico: Complex macroeconomic conditions provide new opportunities
• Poland: More warehouse development expected in 2019
• Romania: Industrial market reaching new heights
• United Kingdom: Industrial market continues to outperform other sectors
• South Korea: Strong logistics-facility demand drives market

To view the full report, click here.

As Industry 4.0 progresses and more companies introduce more transformative technologies in industrial applications, the demand for ways to test the impact of those technologies in the digital world before implementing them in the real world will continue to rise. Plant simulation software for production and processes can help meet this demand by using computer models to show how investing in new equipment or technology could impact operations. Plant simulation software is slowly gaining traction and revenues will reach US$4.1 billion by 2030, finds ABI Research, a market-foresight advisory firm.

“Most industrial companies and industrial engineers still try to solve problems one-by-one,” explained Ryan Martin, Principal Analyst at ABI Research. “For instance, they try to figure out how many Automatic Guided Vehicles (AGVs) they need, then they try to figure out what type of robot to purchase,  then they try to figure out where to place the Computer Numerical Control (CNC) machines, and so forth. Plant simulation software requires a more holistic and more collaborative approach.”

Fortunately for plant simulation software vendors (including AnyLogic, Arena,  Aspen Technology, AVEVA, Dassault Systèmes, MathWorks, Siemens, and Simio), as the Industry 4.0 movement progresses, more industrial companies are creating technology transformation teams (aka Industry 4.0 teams, Advanced Manufacturing teams, Digital Technology teams, etc.). This means more companies are actively looking for new technologies to deploy and scale them with a more complete vision of how technology fits in with enterprise operations. As more companies form these teams, more will adopt simulation software for manufacturing systems.

Industrial companies have formed these technology transformation teams because the synergies between many emerging transformative technologies presented themselves. No single technology drives this movement, but simulation software holds the potential to act as a catalyst for a whole host of them. If simulation software can accurately predict the effects of other technologies on the core goals of manufacturers (i.e., more production, more uptime, improved time to market, improved quality, fewer delays, more efficiencies, greater utilization of assets, all at lower costs) then industrial companies will deploy more technologies at scale with greater confidence with fewer delays.

Right now, industrial companies have an interest in many technologies such as 5G and private LTE (and other forms of connectivity), additive manufacturing, artificial intelligence applications, augmented reality applications, autonomous material handling robots and AGVs, CNCs and other reductive and casting manufacturing methods, cobots and industrial robots, location and asset management applications and metrology and inspection equipment on the line, but they often hesitate to deploy them without any assurance that they will provide the promised benefits. Simulation software can help provide that assurance by demonstrating different deployment scenarios or mixes of technologies on the factory floor.

Despite some progress including more technologies and models of equipment such as robots, vendors can still do more to include transformative technologies. “To get to the stage where plant simulation software accurately incorporates transformative technologies and stays a step ahead of the market while simplifying the user experience, vendors need to continuously hunt down new equipment and technology to include in the simulations, participate in more PoCs and pilots, and start incorporating machine learning and artificial intelligence techniques,” concluded Martin.

These findings are from ABI Research’s Manufacturing Plant Virtualization, Visualization and Simulation application analysis report. This report is part of the company’s Industrial Solution, which will help manufacturers digitize operations to create better quality products at lower costs. Based on extensive primary interviews, Application Analysis reports present in-depth analysis on key market trends and factors for a specific application, which could focus on an individual market or geography.

About ABI Research | ABI Research provides strategic guidance for visionaries needing market foresight on the most compelling transformative technologies, which reshape workforces, identify holes in a market, create new business models and drive new revenue streams. ABI’s own research visionaries take stances early on those technologies, publishing groundbreaking studies often years ahead of other technology advisory firms. ABI analysts deliver their conclusions and recommendations in easily and quickly absorbed formats to ensure proper context. Our analysts strategically guide visionaries to take action now and inspire their business to realize a bigger picture. For more information about subscribing to ABI’s Research Services as well as Industrial and Custom Solutions, visionaries can contact us at +1.516.624.2500 in the Americas, +44.203.326.0140 in Europe, +65.6592.0290 in Asia-Pacific or visit www.abiresearch.com.

The age of the Digital Supply Chain is at hand, according to the findings of MHI’s 6^th Annual Industry Report “Evaluating Supply Chain Digital Consciousness,” developed in conjunction with Deloitte Consulting LLP and released at ProMat 2019.

As with previous iterations, the 2019 report again confirms that digital technologies and innovations continue to fuel increasingly demanding customer expectations for better, faster and more transparent service. Likewise, it validates that the companies who respond to those challenges by readily embracing embrace a digital mindset are the ones who reap the benefits of a digital supply chain that is agile, fully automated and self-learning, says George Prest, CEO of MHI.

“The pace with which technological innovations have been adopted within supply chains over the past six years of our survey is truly astounding,” he notes. “We’re well past the early adopter phase; indeed, those companies who were on the bleeding edge are already experiencing real, measurable and decisive competitive advantages within their marketplaces.”

To help companies better understand both their degree of awareness and of their own progress in achieving a Digital Supply Chain, this year’s report offered two new sections: a review of the four stages of digital maturity, and a self-assessment for benchmarking of digital consciousness.

The report again asked more than 1,000 survey respondents to assess the role of 11 digital innovations in their operations:

• 3D Printing
• Artificial Intelligence (AI)
• Blockchain
• Cloud Computing and Storage
• Driverless Vehicles and Drones
• Internet of Things (IoT)
• Inventory and Network Optimization
• Predictive Analytics
• Robotics and Automation
• Sensors and Automatic Identification
• Wearable and Mobile Technology

Cloud computing and storage is well-entrenched across 56% of supply chains, with adoption expected to grow to 78% in the next two years, and to 90% over the next five. The numbers are similar for inventory and network optimization, and for predictive analytics.

Faster growth rates for the full spectrum of innovative technologies have likely been hampered by companies’ perennial struggles to hiring qualified workers, with 64% rating it extremely or very challenging and 91% calling it at least somewhat challenging. Further, the ever-changing scope of customer demands—including for lower pricing, faster response times and greater customization—represented three of the top five company challenges.

These key challenges are likely the primary drivers behind continued heavy investment in robotics and automation by both manufacturing and supply chain operations, says Thomas Boykin, Leader of Strategy and Operations for Deloitte Consulting’s Supply Chain and Manufacturing Operations practice.

“Based on our analysis, projected spending in 2019 is up by 95% after a trend of survey respondents reporting a decline in planned investments from 2015 to 2018,” he notes. “That would indicate that companies’ forecasted spend on supply chain innovations is at a critical inflection point.”

Boykin also says this finding suggests that as the technologies themselves are maturing, organizations are increasingly recognizing their potential significance to both addressing challenges and impacting the bottom line—and are therefore becoming more comfortable with investing in them.

“Those impacts address the two major challenges identified by survey respondents,” he says. “Yes, customers are increasingly plugged in and expecting near instantaneous service and a high degree of transparency—and digital solutions can address that by making a supply chain far more nimble.”

More details about the 2019 MHI Annual Industry Report are explored in a recent article in MHI Solutions magazine, which also features reflections on the report from members of industry and academia, including:

• Randy V. Bradley, Assistant Professor of Information Systems and Supply Chain Management, Haslam College of Business, The University of Tennessee
• Annette Danek-Akey, Senior Vice President of Supply Chain, Penguin Random House
• Jim Liefer, CEO of Kindred AI
• Joel Reed, CEO of IAM Robotics

To read the full article, click here.

Internet Retailer’s 2019 Top 500 web merchants are gaining market share over smaller rivals, and it’s not just Amazon that’s growing. In fact, it’s the smallest Top 500 retailers that are growing the fastest.

It won’t come as a shock that Amazon.com Inc. is gaining ground in e-commerce, but there are many online competitors growing faster than Amazon.

Internet Retailer’s just-released 2019 Top 500 report, which ranks North America’s leading online retailers by web sales, shows that the retailers ranked Nos. 401-500 this year grew their collective web revenue by 24.3% in 2018 over 2017, faster than the 20.0% growth of Amazon, and well above the 14.1% year-over-year e-commerce growth in North America.

The Top 500 as a whole grew their worldwide online sales by 17.6% in 2018, and accounted for 89.8% of U.S. online retail sales in 2018, up nearly three percentage points from 87.0% in 2017. Amazon, by far the leading online retailer in North America, accounted for 22.4% of U.S. e-commerce in 2018, compared to 20.9% a year earlier.

While some believe Amazon is killing the operators of retail stores, store-grounded retailers are more than holding their own online. The 138 retail chains in the Top 500 grew their online sales by an average of 16.3% in 2018. And some did far better than that, including Walmart Inc., No. 3 in the Top 500, whose web sales increased 38.8% in 2018 and have grown by an average of 26% over the past five years, according to Internet Retailer.

Consumer brand manufacturers in the Top 500 also grew rapidly online, increasing their web sales by 17.9% in 2018. Nike Inc. (No. 34) was among the big winners, growing by 25.0%. But so were the 31 digitally native brands that got their start on the web, though some now also sell through stores. These web-first brands, such as The Honest Co. (No. 135) and Glossier Inc. (No. 404), collectively increased their online sales by 29.5% in 2018, versus 17.4% for the rest of the Top 500.

Internet Retailer, which has been ranking North America’s leading online retailers since 2004, not only estimates sales for each Top 500 retailer but also such key metrics as website traffic, conversion rate, average order value, customer demographics and more—more than 200 data points for each retailer. All of that data is contained in an online database available by subscription.

“Researching the Top 500 never gets old for us because e-commerce keeps changing every year,” says Molly Love, CEO of Vertical Web Media LLC, publisher of the Internet Retailer 2019 Top 500 report. “This year’s Top 500 report digs into exciting new developments in e-commerce, including the big surge in online grocery sales and the growth of omni-channel services offered by store-based retailers. For anyone competing in or following e-commerce, this report is a treasure trove of data that can’t be found anywhere else.”

ABOUT DC360 Research | At Digital Commerce 360 (DC360) Research our goal is to provide data and information about e-commerce that helps retail companies, investors and technology providers prosper. The team tracks hundreds of metrics on roughly 6,000 online retail companies around the world, including such sought-after data points as web sales and traffic, conversion rates, average order value and key technology partners used to power their e-commerce businesses. We sell this data in its raw format in our multiple online databases, and we dig deeply into these numbers in our custom research division, and to help inform our 30+ exclusive analysis reports we publish each year on key e-commerce topics, including online marketplaces, cross-border e-commerce and omni-channel retailing.

If you’re among the 64% of 2018 MHI Annual Industry Report respondents who said hiring qualified workers is a top operational challenge, now is the time for employers like yourself to completely rethink present business models, says leading authority on workplace culture Eric Chester.

An author who has spent more than 20 years researching and writing about employee engagement and the workplace desires of the emerging generations, Chester shared insights about creating an engaging workplace culture in a Q&A article featured in the second quarter issue of MHI Solutions magazine, “Hiring and Retention: Why Workplace Culture is Key.”

The following is his answer to the question, “Why should material handling and supply chain employers be reconsidering and revising their current employee policies and procedures sooner than later?”

Everyone—regardless of their industry—should be reconsidering their policies and procedures. If you look at Bureau of Labor statistics, there’s currently 3.7% unemployment. But think about it: Who really wants to hire the 3.7% who are unemployed? Not to put a broad label on these folks, but generally these are people who are unable or unmotivated to find work, for whatever reason. They’re not the type of individual companies want to hire anyway. Companies want “good” people, however they define that, and the “good” people already have jobs.

So, if it’s the tightest labor market in 50 years, and it’s only going to get worse, then companies shouldn’t be complaining about having to raise salaries to lure employees to their ranks. Rather, they should be saying, “How can I be the best employer in this industry, or in my community? I’ve got to be the place that everybody wants to go to work.” That’s the goal. Companies certainly want to be the business that gets the most customers and makes the most money, so why can’t they also be the business that says, “We want to be the best place to work.”

And companies have to do that if they want to stay in business. They know why their customers choose to buy from them. But do they know why would someone want to work for them? So many companies are stuck for an answer: “We offer a competitive salary. We have a 401K and we offer health insurance. On Fridays you can wear jeans and we have a Christmas party.” But if they think about their competitors—do those companies offer all those same things too?

What companies today should want is to create a workplace culture where everybody who works there sells it as a great place to work. Because those employees interact every single day with other folks who are potential hires. Don’t leave attraction and retention to Human Resources—it’s not their job, they do policy. Everybody in an organization needs to be an active, vivid recruiter for the company. Everybody. That means everybody’s got to know why this is the best place to work.

To get more insights from the full interview with Chester, click here.

To overcome these added challenges, the survey shows teams have instituted tariff engineering measures such as a reliance on local manufacturers for product assembly and new manufacturing platforms

Fictiv today released their fourth annual State of Hardware Report, exposing the added burden of tariffs on an industry already struggling to quickly and affordably bring products to market. The detailed data-driven insights from this year’s survey found that companies across America, from large enterprises to small startups, have encountered exaggerated supply chain and resource constraints when trying to get to market as a result of tension between the U.S. and its trade partners. To compensate, product development teams said they are leveraging multiple tariff engineering tactics to circumvent manufacturing obstacles and sculpt more agile supply chains.

Top level findings from the 2019 report include:

• Sixty-two percent (62%) said tariffs have resulted in an increased cost of materials and components;
• Thirty percent (30%) of projects are over budget and 38% behind schedule;
• Forty three percent (43%) of respondents do not have adequate resources to manage their manufacturing operations;
• As a result, 61% of employees are working outside of their designated job responsibilities.

“It’s clear from this year’s survey that recent changes in trade policy have complicated and exacerbated inherent inefficiencies in manufacturing and the global supply chain,” said Dave Evans, co-founder and CEO of Fictiv. “But it’s reassuring to see the continued resourcefulness and ingenuity of product teams as they counter these enhanced challenges by embracing new manufacturing platforms and technologies, ramping up nearshoring, and assembling final products locally.”

Increased Challenges Bringing Product To Market
The report details how trade tensions have inflamed some of the industry’s core long-term challenges, and made it even more difficult for respondents now bringing products to market:

• Ability to Scale: The process from prototype to production continues to strain product teams with many saying that they have difficulty finding partners that can adjust production volumes. One-in-five (20%) respondents were “dissatisfied” or “very dissatisfied” with their manufacturer’s ability to ramp production volumes up or down.
• Teams: Added complexity and costs are undermining employee focus and productivity with 43% of respondents reporting they are understaffed and/or don’t have adequate resources to handle new supply chain management issues and 61% of employees taking on work outside of their normal responsibilities to make up for the resource gap.
• Quality: Product developers rely on manufacturers to manage quality, but only 26% of respondents were “very satisfied” with their supplier’s level of quality management. Seventy-one percent (71%) of survey respondents were “somewhat satisfied” or “dissatisfied.”
• Time: Time is a product development team’s most precious asset. Twenty-four percent (24%) of respondents listed the pressures of rapid product development as a critical risk for development teams, including the tradeoffs between speed and quality and costs.

Tariff Engineering & Bridging the Production Gap
To counter these troubling trends and ensure supply chains remain agile in uncertain times, supply chain managers are engaging in creative tariff engineering efforts. Most often this means  leveraging local manufacturing resources as much as possible and using a combination of solutions in an effort to gain more speed and control.

According to respondents, 51% use local manufacturers and 47% use manufacturing platforms for prototyping. Once in production, 65% have started to assemble products locally.

Even with recent advances in streamlining the prototyping process, bridging the gap between prototype and production to successfully bring a new product to market at scale remains fraught with challenges and risks. To help, product teams reported stocking up on key parts before the tariffs took effect while others are manufacturing parts overseas but assembling final products at home to avoid tariffs.

“As Industry 4.0 unfolds and the digitization of manufacturing matures, we believe product teams will be better equipped to combat the onslaught of geopolitical forces that impact their ability to get to market,” continued Evans. “At Fictiv, we’re creating a world where technology transforms manufacturing to be faster, more affordable and more reliable — making companies more resilient against the changing tides of trade wars and tariffs.”

Silver Lining: Job Satisfaction
Despite the demands of managing the manufacturing process and supply chains in the face of changing trade policies, teams still reported a profound sense of satisfaction when jobs are completed successfully. The report also found that smaller companies seem to have higher job satisfaction. Seventy percent (70%) of people who reported high happiness levels are employed by companies with 100 people or less.

2019 State of Hardware Report Demographics & Methodology
This year’s survey polled 711 developers and manufacturers spanning 53 industries. Most participants were highly experienced with 32% reporting having more than 10 years professional experience in their respective fields. Thirty-four percent (34%) work at companies with over 100 employees and 18% at companies with 500+ employees.

To view the entire Fictiv’s 2019 State of Hardware Report, click here.

About Fictiv | Fictiv is democratizing access to manufacturing, transforming how hardware teams design, develop and deliver physical products. Its virtual manufacturing platform pairs intelligent workflow and collaboration software with Fictiv’s global network of highly vetted manufacturers. From prototype to production, Fictiv helps hardware teams work efficiently and bring products to market faster. www.fictiv.com

Spending on AR in warehousing alone will reach over US$23 Billion by 2025

Demand for warehousing facilities has been steadily increasing thanks to the strength of international trade and the continual growth of e-commerce. With customer expectations for rapid delivery rising, warehouses are struggling to process the increased volumes of goods passing through facilities in time. The problem is compounded by labor shortages and staffing challenges. The need to adopt technology to alleviate these issues is driving significant investment in Augmented Reality (AR), voice-directed solutions, and Real-Time Location Systems (RTLS) for workforce analytics. By 2025, global spending on AR in warehousing will reach over US$23 billion, US$3.3 billion will be spent on voice solutions, and RTLS will grow to 500,000 implementations for people tracking across all verticals, according to ABI Research, a market-foresight advisory firm providing strategic guidance on the most compelling transformative technologies.

“Fulfilling higher order volumes is difficult when warehouses are struggling to hire and maintain staff, and automation is cost-prohibitive for many distributors,” said Nick Finill, Senior Analyst at ABI Research. “Warehouses are therefore increasingly using digital tools that can empower the human worker, deliver efficiency gains, and also reduce the time it takes to onboard new or temporary staff.”

Augmented Reality is finally starting to gain mass appeal in industrial sectors, thanks to maturing technologies and demonstrable ROI from early adopters. Voice-directed solutions represent a considerably older technology but are also undergoing a technological revolution thanks to deep learning-based voice recognition that vastly improves ease-of-use and reliability. These solutions are both being leveraged to assist the warehouse workforce by providing operational instructions in a clear and hands-free way.

The drive for digitally-enabled workforce productivity in the warehouse is incorporating the human worker into the Internet of Things at a rapid pace. The increased use of RTLS technologies, such as Bluetooth Low Energy, Wi-Fi tracking, and RFID, are allowing warehouse operators to analyze productivity of the workforce, as well as the movement of physical assets. Workers can be monitored in a way that respects privacy while generating valuable operational data that can drive workforce efficiency over time.

Companies such as RealWare, Kontakt.io, Panasonic, Lucas Systems, and TopSystem are providing warehouses with a wide range of technology solutions that can provide incremental advantages. Driving productivity in this way can be an attractive alternative to more expensive automation projects, which is a concurrent trend in warehousing with the potential to transform operations in the longer term.

“The combination of multiple devices and technology solutions can have a positive compound effect on workforce productivity,” concluded Finill. “However, companies must be smart about how they integrate multiple technical solutions within the same stack to ensure they remain complementary and ROI is maximized.”

These findings are from ABI Research’s ‘Devices and Solutions for Workforce Productivity in Warehouse Logistics’ technology analysis report. This report is part of the company’s Intelligent Supply Chain service, which includes research, data, and analyst insights. Based on extensive primary interviews, Technology Analysis reports present in-depth analysis on key market trends and factors for a specific technology.

About ABI Research | ABI Research provides strategic guidance for visionaries needing market foresight on the most compelling transformative technologies, which reshape workforces, identify holes in a market, create new business models and drive new revenue streams. ABI’s own research visionaries take stances early on those technologies, publishing groundbreaking studies often years ahead of other technology advisory firms. ABI analysts deliver their conclusions and recommendations in easily and quickly absorbed formats to ensure proper context. Our analysts strategically guide visionaries to take action now and inspire their business to realize a bigger picture. For more information about subscribing to ABI’s Research Services as well as Industrial and Custom Solutions, visionaries can contact us at +1.516.624.2500 in the Americas, +44.203.326.0140 in Europe, +65.6592.0290 in Asia-Pacific or visit www.abiresearch.com.