Impressive innovation on view

So said a speaker at last month’s TGW Fashion Expert Day event in Austria which I was delighted to attend.

The automated intralogistics provider says this means warehouse automation needs to be flexible enough to deal with the unpredictable demand. With this end in mind, TGW has designed its automation solutions to be channel independent.

That is, one system will handle any combination of orders regardless of whether the ultimate destination is to store, wholesaler or to the consumer’s front door. One example is Puma, which has a new DC opening in Germany in 2021 (By the way, Puma have been busy in Yorkshire too).

At the core of the system is TGW’s FlashPick for automated single-item picking. It will have 713,000 storage locations, with some 122,000 SKUs. The plan is to ship 74m units per year, with a B2B Peak picking 13,500 cartons per hour, and the B2C peak picking 124,000 pieces per day.

Modern counterbalance truck

Linde has released its new counterbalance truck, which innovates in terms of performance, fleet management, truck power and connectivity.

Linde’s fleet management software Connect will be included as standard, an increasingly common move, as Toyota now issues its fleet management software I_Site on all warehouse trucks. The new Linde forklift is the start of a new form factor, which will apply to all Linde counterbalance models under 5 tonnes loading capacity, regardless of the power source used.

This should lead to fewer components used and manufacturing savings, giving scope for lower cost trucks.