The Three Main Challenges in Logistics Automation

The market for e-commerce is growing rapidly. With increased internet sales, the need for larger warehouses and distribution centers, and automation systems increases. In fulfillment centers finished goods for end-users, or products for the business-to-business sector are stored, commissioned, and shipped. With the internationalization of distribution chains, the key to success lies with efficient logistics. To manage these supply chains, many new warehouses and distribution centers are being built, and more will follow. These distribution centers can operate in different ways: 

  • The company itself operates the warehouse and distribution center (proprietary) 
  • A third party operates the warehouse for a specific customer (Third-party logistics, 3PL) 
  • A third party carries out all logistic processes for several customers in the same warehouse (3PL, multi-client) 

Along with this differentiation between types of warehouses, the need for agility and reconfiguration capabilities is increasing. A proprietary warehouse will typically adapt more slowly than a 3PL warehouse, even after accounting for the impact of seasonal goods. Third-party logistics providers need to be agile, as customers of these services usually contract for just one or two years. With these changing requirements, the warehouse IT systems and infrastructure must also be highly flexible.  

The main challenges that the logistics automation market face are: 

  • Maintain efficiency and throughput under a constantly changing product range 
  • Providing capabilities for fast training and support of temporary staff 
  • Faster integration of humans, manual support systems, and automation

Although many individual concepts for warehouses exist, a general trend for larger facilities is observable. A good example is the new Amazon facility in Stanton, Delaware. In this distribution center, 10000 robots vastly outnumber 1000 human workers in a 340.000 m2 warehouse. The sheer size of such a facility as well as the broad product range illustrates the need for new concepts of human-robot interaction. 


Safety as a Key Factor 

When it comes to automation, safety is always a key factor. To ensure that no human comes to harm by machinery nowadays there are two concepts.  

The first and easiest way is to keep humans completely separated from the automated area during the operation of the system. This is done by safety measures such as laser barriers or light fences as well as a fence around the system area. Whenever this safety barrier is breached the complete system or parts of it are shut down, stopping the operation of the system. An example of such a system is shown in the picture below where pick stations are located on the outer rim of the robotized logistic warehouse, which can lead to long transport distances of the goods, and which heavily influences efficiency. 

The second presently available safety concept is that each automated transport vehicle becomes intrinsically safe using certified safety sensors, such as laser scanners. While this enables cooperated working areas, it comes at a significant cost increase to the overall system, since every vehicle needs to be equipped with expensive technology. This is especially true for large-scale warehouses since the costs of the safety system scale with the number of robots used. 

Therefore, there is an urgent need for new ways of realizing safety in cooperated warehouses, such as a mobile safety guard around the human itself and not the machine. Such a concept would enable integration of the pick station from our example into the warehouse as shown in the picture below, travel distances could be reduced, tasks and orders could be scheduled between the human and robot workforces. 

In the second blog post, we will introduce you to the concept of the Safety Vest System. Stay tuned… 


KONČAR – Electrical Engineering Institute is mainly focused on providing solutions in the area of railway and electric power equipment and systems. However, recognizing the huge potential of the developed technology of Safety Vest System, we are publishing this blog post series to attract partners interested in bringing it to the market. 

This work has been supported by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under grant agreement No. 688117 (SafeLog). SafeLog project consortium was comprised of: 

  • Karlsruhe Institute of Technology 
  • Swisslog 
  • Czech Technical University in Prague 
  • The University of Zagreb, Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing
  • Fraunhofer Institute for Material Flow and Logistics
  • KONČAR – Electrical Engineering Institute