Matthews Automation Solutions: Developing innovations that support Roadmap’s vision of 2025
When Paul Jensen, Division President of MHI Member Matthews Automation Solutions (comprised of Matthews Marking Systems, Holjeron, Lightning Pick and Pyramid Controls, thinks about the types of innovations required by supply chains to meet the U.S. Roadmap for Material Handling & Logistics’ vision of 2025, he thinks “data.”
“The management and integration of data is one of the leading opportunities, and challenges, for supply chains—not just in the United States, but worldwide,” he explains. “With the rise of cloud computing and its ability to manage, manipulate and analyze information via the Internet, companies have unprecedented opportunities to better leverage their supply chains and increase their service offerings—and sales.”
The reason, Jensen continues, is because data is at the heart of order fulfillment. “Data is what’s used to mark, identify, track, control and pick the products required by every order. Customers are looking to suppliers like us to help them link and integrate all that data throughout the process,” he explains.
To that end, the Matthews family of brands has developed a variety of data-driven automation solutions that boost system interconnectivity and automate complex tasks that humans can’t accomplish efficiently. For example, when a customer places an order with an online retailer, there is a variety of data associated with the customer, the order and the required product(s).
“The systems we create and supply to e-commerce businesses include solutions such as light-directed mobile picking carts that use order data processing algorithms. The software continuously analyzes order data to group orders based on required product storage locations,” he says. To enable the carts to respond flexibly to changing order data, control software guides cart operators to areas with the highest order volumes at a given time, continues Jensen. Then, put-to-light modules display how many items each order requires.
Further, to meet the demands of consumers for mass personalization services, the company has offers brand-on-demand marking systems. The printers generate customized, order-specific messaging on shipping labels and the exterior of cardboard shipping cartons. “Again, the goal is to help companies better leverage the data associated with an order,” explains Jensen. “For example, with our systems in place, an online retailer can offer a grandparent the option to imprint a personalized greeting on a box containing a present that’s shipping to a grandchild.”
Likewise, by using Matthews Marking’s MPERIA universal print controller platform, manufacturers and shippers can coordinate and control the information marked on products across their supply chains—including multiple production lines in different locations worldwide. The system communicates through wireless or Ethernet connections and interfaces with enterprise resource planning (ERP) and warehouse management systems (WMS), he says.
“MPERIA manages the hundreds of data formats needed to comply with local country messaging requirements throughout a global supply chain,” Jensen adds. “And, it helps co-packers accommodate the coding placement requests of their customers to minimize the risk of chargebacks for non-compliance.”
Finally, the company is exploring ways to offer customers mobile computing solutions as a means to leverage real-time connectivity. “We’re taking an Internet-of-Things approach to engineer solutions for off-site monitoring of an order fulfillment process, or tracking of a specific order—either by the retailer or the consumer,” he says.
Cloud computing is still very much in its formative years, says Jensen, with many companies recognizing its importance to their supply chains, yet still strategizing about how to best capitalize upon its strengths.
“But it’s coming. That’s why the solutions we’re thinking about today are strongly influenced by our vision of a future in the cloud,” he concludes. “The idea is to help our customers improve their operations through better data management functions such as performance monitoring and analysis, troubleshooting, preventive maintenance alerts and notifications.”
Click here to learn more about the U.S. Roadmap for Material Handling & Logistics.
