Addressing labor challenges and enhancing operational efficiency are crucial priorities in
manufacturing, warehousing, and logistics. Automating the palletized material workflow plays a
significant role in achieving these objectives. And advances in robotic lift truck technology are
empowering modern industrial facilities to reach unprecedented levels of efficiency, productivity,
and safety.
Facility operations have long desired to bring autonomy to palletized material flows within their
environments. Over time, the technology available to achieve their automation efforts has
progressed to a broad set of options, ranging from the highly predictable but infrastructure-laden
Autonomous Guided Vehicles (AGVs) introduced a half century ago, to the highly flexible and
infrastructure-free LiDAR/SLAM Autonomous Mobile Robots (AMRs) available today.
Let’s take a closer look at autonomous lift truck AMRs and how they can combat the labor crisis.
These advanced lift trucks introduce greater capability, safety, and scalability, enabling facilities
to tackle labor challenges, achieve operational goals, and bolster a competitive edge. They also
enhance productivity and reliability in the workplace by ensuring efficient, consistent material
movement and minimized downtime.
Optimized workflow: Seegrid Lift RS1 AMR efficiently moving materials across the facility.
Rising Labor Challenges
Autonomous lift trucks are proving effective in addressing the three biggest labor challenges impacting manufacturing, warehousing, and logistics operations: labor costs, labor availability, and safety.
Labor Costs: As labor costs continue to rise, particularly in unionized environments, modern industrial facilities are focusing on strategic cost management and resource allocation. Lift truck AMRs present an opportunity to enhance operational efficiency while allowing companies to invest in their workforce more effectively. By automating highly repetitive tasks, facilities can redirect human talent towards higher-value roles and tasks that require advanced skills and independent thinking. This approach not only addresses cost concerns but also improves employee satisfaction by reducing monotonous work and creating opportunities for employees to engage in more stimulating and rewarding responsibilities across industrial manufacturing facilities.
Labor Availability: Attracting and retaining a reliable workforce is a major challenge, particularly in multi-shift operations with less desirable evening and night hours. Absenteeism leads to costly downtime. This is where autonomous lift trucks are another game-changer—they show up for every shift, on time, and deliver consistent performance without breaks or dips in efficiency or precision.
Safety: It’s all too common for humans to make costly, often dangerous mistakes when operating
lift trucks. But lift truck AMRs simply don't. Manual operators are responsible for over 25,000
accidents and nearly 100 fatalities each year. The shortage of skilled lift truck operators worsens
the issue, as 25% of OSHA recordable incidents result from inadequate training. Consequently,
manufacturing, warehousing, and logistics operations are increasingly adopting lift truck AMRs
to automate their hazardous and inefficient workflows, thereby enhancing operational and
workplace safety.
AGVs, however, have historically been favored for their reliability and predictability. These autonomous vehicles follow fixed paths that are traditionally defined by physical infrastructure such as magnetic strips, wires, or optical sensors embedded in the facility's floor. They offer ideal solutions for repetitive tasks in structured environments, where their unwavering adherence to predetermined routes minimizes the risk of deviations and ensures a steady, predictable workflow. AGVs are predictability workhorses.
Strategic Benefits of Automated Lift Trucks
The strategic benefits of automated lift trucks extend beyond addressing labor challenges:
Direct Cost Savings: From straight labor savings alone, manufacturing, warehousing and logistics operations typically achieve an ROI payback from investment in lift truck AMRs within 24 months. In multi-shift manufacturing operations, the return can be achieved in as little as 18 months.
Added Financial Value: Lift truck AMRs bring powerful added value. Not only do they improve safety, but they also help prevent costly damage—avoiding collisions with each other, protecting payloads, safeguarding equipment, and steering clear of walls.
Strategic Impact: Transitioning to a more autonomous palletized material flow can significantly enhance the overall performance of facility operations. For instance, using lift truck AMRs improves the efficiency of parts-to-line processes, ensuring materials are delivered precisely when needed, potentially reducing inventory within the facility by 25 to 30%. These efficiencies result in vast inventory cost savings and more optimal use of space.
The strategic benefits of automated lift trucks extend beyond labor challenges. They offer significant cost savings, enhance safety, and prevent costly damage. By improving material flow
and process efficiency, lift truck AMRs can optimize facility operations, reduce inventory, and
maximize space usage.
Challenges of Payload Manipulation
Reliably automating the pick-up and placement of forkable objects poses a significant technical
challenge. This process demands advanced payload detection systems capable of properly
recognizing and handling a wide variety of payloads. While standardizing on two-pocket wooden
pallets would simplify the task, the reality is far more complex. In modern manufacturing
environments there are thousands of “forkable objects,” pallets or other payloads intended to be
manipulated by a lift truck, that do not resemble a stereotypical, perfect wooden pallet—posing a
great challenge to autonomy. With countless variations of diverse forkable payloads, from
open-air knock-down boxes to carts and various objects that bear no resemblance to a pallet,
each task requires precise handling by autonomous lift trucks.
In addition to the limitless payload types, another challenge exists. The physical condition of the
forkable object also varies considerably. Common wear and tear can quickly transform many
pallets into shapes that don’t quite resemble pallets anymore.
Payload detection and manipulation are further complicated by the fact that forkable objects are
often imperfectly placed by human operators. The pick-and-drop tasks frequently require
precision and agility to adapt to the dynamic and variable positioning of goods. Effectively
meeting these payload manipulation challenges requires intelligent AMRs designed for
flexibility and adaptability, equipped with advanced LiDAR/SLAM sensors and sophisticated
tech stacks.
Efficiency for the Long Haul
Efficient payload handling is crucial for acquiring and accurately positioning a payload.
However, distinct capabilities are needed for transporting between pickup and drop-off locations,
often over long distances. While flexibility is essential for pick and drop tasks, long haul
movements of payloads demand a different capability of excellence—predictability.
Predictability is an area where Automated Guided Vehicles (AGVs) have traditionally been
known to excel. These vehicles follow fixed paths defined by requiring physical infrastructure
like magnetic strips, wires, or reflectors to name a few, implemented into a facility. AGVs
provide ideal solutions for repetitive tasks in structured environments, where their unwavering
adherence to predetermined routes minimizes deviations and ensures a consistent, predictable
workflow.
The most effective autonomous industrial vehicles can navigate with the predictability of an
AGV, but remarkably without any magnets or other physical infrastructure. Seegrid pioneered
this innovation in 2008, with the introduction of the Grid Engine. This 3D probabilistic mapping
technology facilitates precise indoor localization for
vehicles in industrial settings.
The Best of Both Worlds
The ideal solution doesn’t force modern facilities to choose between the predictability of traditional AGV’s or the flexibility of modern AMRs. Unique-to-Seegrid Sliding Scale Autonomy technology merges these two paradigms to offer an innovative hybrid approach that adapts to the specific needs of the application at hand. Additionally, Seegrid’s industry-leading pallet and payload detection system allows lift trucks to pick and move the widest array of forkable objects in the market today without the need for any additional infrastructure.
Seegrid Lift CR1 AMR picking and transporting automotive manufacturing crates for parts-to-line applications.
The Future of Autonomous Palletized Material Handling
It’s no longer a matter of “if” autonomous workflows should be adopted—it’s a matter of how
and when. The more autonomous a facility becomes, the more benefits and ROI can be
expected—from overall operational cost and inventory reduction to reliable throughput and
predictability. Autonomous lift trucks, in concert with other autonomous technologies, are
facilitating full end-to-end workflow autonomy with the ability to adjust to increasing and
changing demands of modern manufacturing, warehousing, and logistics facilities.
When considering the integration of autonomous systems into existing workflows, it's important
to understand the limitations and strengths of both human and machine capabilities. Autonomous
vehicles and manual operators are not a 1:1 swap. As famously noted by Seegrid Founder Hans
Moravec in what is known as Moravec’s Paradox, things that are easy for humans are very hard
for machines, whereas things that are hard for humans are easy for machines. With this in mind,
the best combination is for humans and machines to work alongside each other—with AMRs
doing the mundane and often dangerous tasks, while humans are left to more cognitive roles.
