MARCH - 20218 logisticstechoutlook.comIn My OPINIONScroll through any news feed you choose, and you will find articles that praise the power and promise of artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms to transform our society. Artificial intelligence is both the most underrated and overrated technology; overrated to the extent that people attribute super-intelligent properties to it and underrated in the sense that we certainly cannot fully appreciate how it will work its way into many facets of our lives. AI has already completely transformed certain specific problems. Check your Amazon recommended purchases or notice the ads Facebook chooses to serve you if you have any doubts. AI is also well on the way to delivering autonomous driving capabilities for all sorts of vehicles and material handling equipment. There is a lot to be excited about.For all the progress in other areas, where is AI being applied to complex controls decisions in modern distribution centers? In a typical DC filled with conveyor, merges, and sorters, the controls decisions are being made instantaneously based on input from sensors and barcode scanners. Those decisions to turn a conveyor on or off are highly pre-determined; every scenario that can happen is represented in the PLC code. There is very little to be gained from trying to apply extra intelligence to these decisions. However, there are an increasing number of systems where extra intelligence can significantly improve performance. These are systems where multiple pieces of equipment can be assigned to any number of potential tasks. Imagine a building with thousands of orders to be fulfilled and hundreds of robots available to bring items to many different stations for picking and shipping. In that not-so- hypothetical scenario, there are very By Cortney Hunt, Corporate Vice President of Operations Support, McLane CompanyLET'S PUT MORE INTELLIGENCE IN MATERIAL HANDLING SYSTEMSAsking a computer to follow rules-of-thumb-based heuristics is not much different than asking a super-fast human to make all of the decisions
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