In the world of material handling, the notion of "driverless-ness" has been around for 60 years since the first automated guided vehicle (AGV) appeared in a grocery warehouse. High-tech warehouse operations are already used to the sight of AGVs performing tasks such as the vertical storage and retrieval of pallets and the loading and unloading of pallets onto outbound trailers.

Damco, a global third-party logistics provider, has developed the Supply Chain Orchestrator program.

Yusen Logistics has acquired a new warehouse and expanded storage capacity at its Duisburg-Rheinhausen site in Germany.

Mainfreight USA, a global supply-chain and logistics services provider, has added two warehouses to its North American logistics network, in Newark, N.J., and Dallas.

One of the major findings from the 27th Annual State of Logistics report is that "gaps" in infrastructure and "accelerating trends for speed" will increasingly put pressure on a logistics system not designed for e-commerce driven "last mile, last minute" delivery service.

Challenge: A pharmaceutical company's existing manual pick/pass picking system was constrained due to unbalanced workload across the operation — flooding some zones while others had no orders to pick.