SCDigest editorial staff

Supply Chain Digest editor Dan Gilmore attended this week’s North American Material Handling Show in Cleveland. While there were not a lot of new products released or displayed at the show, here were his favorites:

The Smart Loader by Jervis B Webb: This is a combination AGV and fork truck, which we believe is the first on the market to actually be able to place loads in a trailer unattended. It is designed for 24 x 7, unattended operation.

The floor demo was impressive, and a booth representative told Gilmore a major beverage company, which is probably Anheuser-Busch, is using about 25 of the units in a DC for trailer loading, and a smaller group to do floor stacking. The system uses a series of tags in the floor, trailers and on storage locations to guide and calibrate the vehicle. Unlike most other approaches to automated truck loading, the system requires no real modification to a warehouse floor or truck trailer, other than the tag placement. It can load pallets two wide or two high in a trailer, or center a single pallet.

The Smart Loader from Jervis B. Webb – combination fork truck and AGV

Smart Loaders list for $150,000 to $170,000 each before engineering and software work.

Also interesting was the Smart Dock software application from BGI International. This is a new web-based version of the company’s dock door management system used by many grocers and some in other industries. The web native element of the new release makes it especially appealing for companies to easily provide management and visibility of door activities, and to enable carriers to schedule appointments over the web. This is representative of the increased emphasis in the dock and yard management areas by both end user companies and software vendors, as others such as HighJump Software, Manhattan Associates and RedPrairie all had visual yard and/or dock management systems featured at the show.

North American Material Handling Show 2006: “Best of Show Review page 2

Did you attend NAMH 2006? What cool new products did we miss? Any comments on our Best of Show list? Let us know your thoughts.