Interest in warehouse automation in was on full display at the MODEX 2024 trade show held in in mid-March in Atlanta.

The bi-annual trade show and conference saw blowout attendance and exhibitor numbers, with almost 49,000 registrants – an incredible number, and up 32% from the last MODEX in 2022. That according to show producer MHI - once known as the Materials Handling Institute of America.

For much of the show the aisles were packed.

At the show, Roboteon spoke with more than 100 attendees at our large booth in hall C, and identified some interesting trends we think are worth sharing.

1. It is clear most companies are early in the process of evaluating and piloting robots in distribution and for logistics functions in manufacturing. So if that describes where your company is at right now, you are hardly alone. That said, there is a growing sense of urgency at many companies to get something going in this area.
2. Many show attendees were looking for help in identifying what types of robots for what applications were right for their companies, and calculating the likely ROI for different use cases. The important takeaway: education is key right now, even as interest soars, but more overall industry expertise is also needed to help potential users through the process.
3. One thing is clear: There is huge pent up demand for materials handling robotics in both manufacturing and distribution, as companies wrestle with use case selection, integration, and ROI. But pilot programs often taking too long to show the value, for a variety of reasons.One of these is a lack of robot software capable of accelerating the integration of robots with Warehouse Management, ERP, Manufacturing Execution, and other systems. Also helpful: software with pre-built applications for robot-enabled order picking and other warehouse and manufacturing processes. Add to that highly configurable workflows, and other capabilities to support fulfillment execution using robots. Or more accurately, robots and humans, working together as one.
4. Understanding of the role of software in robot success varied significantly across attendees we spoke with. Some were focused on basic integration between a robot system and their Warehouse Management or ERP software for a specific application, such as collaborative picking, as just one example.

Other companies were looking at the bigger picture and understood the value of using a software platform not only to handle the core integration, but also enable advanced execution functionality, and to easily add robots of different types and/or from different vendors over time (interoperability), rather than being locked into a particular robot vendor’s software.

Case in point: We spoke with an IT manager for a major high tech company, who told us he was supporting nine different point-to-point robot integrations, which was a real issue for the company in terms of orchestrating workflow, and greatly limited on-going flexibility. This is not a “happy path.”

The good news: Roboteon has a warehouse robotics software platform available right now to address these and other challenges and opportunities. Gartner uses the term “Multi-agent Orchestration (MAO) Platforms” to categorize this newer type of software, driven by robotics. We don’t know if that term itself will stick, but the capabilities it includes most certainly will. We like to think of our solution as MAO+.

It’s an exciting time for distribution and manufacturing managers, with all these automation choices to consider. Demand for such automation is clearly strong, but the process is often taking longer than it should . Other companies are not looking at the pig picture in terms of adding other robots and orchestrating flows across heterogeneous automation environments.

An overarching robotic software platform may be just the ticket for accelerating proof of concept trials, actual deployments, and time-to-value, while maximizing system throughput and cost reduction achievable with robotics.

Let’s discuss your challenges and opportunities for warehouse and manufacturing robotic automation soon.

In our next blog, we’ll share some additional very insightful trends as seen by leading analyst firm Interact Analysis.