DECEMBER 20209MANUFACTURING TECHNOLOGY INSIGHTSIoT: Enabling The Safer, Connected Warehouse about the warehouse­whether on foot, or on a vehicle such as a forklift truck. We established a system whereby if a forklift truck came within two meters of another truck or a pedestrian a proximity alarm would sound, enabling the operator to stop the vehicle.We also fitted operators with heart rate monitors. After correlation of the data, we established that we were much more likely to get a close proximity alert after lunch, when heart rates are reduced and people can become lethargic.This proof of concept meant that we were not only able to educate the workforce about the enhanced safety issue that followed lunchtime, but also demonstrated the effectiveness of this system of proximity alerts via wearables.A connected warehouseThe success of that trial enabled us to begin work on a second phase of the project, which encompasses not just safety improvements but also delivers productivity benefits and makes the warehouse more connected.In our Advanced Regional Centre warehouse in Singapore, IoT technology is embedded for a customer with heat map functions, serving as a real-time location system (RTLS) solution that automatically identifies and monitors the interactions of inventory, equipment, and people. Statistics gathered from the live reporting are tracked through pre-assigned asset-tags. These provide higher resolution data and heat maps, allowing the warehouse team to gather insights on factors such as safety, traffic build-up, and workflow efficiency analysis. The technology encourages an ongoing safety behavior and culture. It helps to determine if all personnel are accounted for in the event of an emergency, prevents accidents through automatic reporting on any proximity hazards and improves safety by prompting alerts when unusual activity is detected on the asset-tagIt means that supervisors are now in a position to have factual conversations­informed by data-with their direct reports about safety issues. That's crucial to improving morale in the warehouse.Aside from boosting safety standards in the warehouse, the IoT technology also distinguishes security breaches, and helps to streamline operations, combat congestion and optimize aisle product placement, thereby driving higher productivity.In essence, this is about understanding where people are in the warehouse, optimizing what they're doing, and becoming more productive and efficient in how we serve our customers. Unique IoT platformAt DHL, we are leading the way in our use of IoT in the industry. That leadership position is currently being reinforced by our development of a common IoT platform across the business, something that is unique amongst logistics providers.The platform, which is shared across all our divisions, will allow us to manage, take advantage of, and realize the value of IoT advancement. It positions us to leverage economies of scale for procurement and deployment and promote re-usability and full collaboration across all our initiatives.It provides the flexibility to onboard and manage the devices of multiple vendors, while at the same time putting a strong focus on security.Finally, it manages the data in the central repository of DHL's Data Lake, opening up new possibilities to further extract new insights by creating and running advanced analytics.The platform is a further step in our development of smart warehouses­ones in which we can see, understand and optimize processes-leading to improvements in operational efficiency, increased transparency, optimization of resources and improved process quality and performance on behalf of our customers. Steve Walker
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