Analyst Insight: The need for speed, along with margin pressures, is causing food and beverage distributors to look for ways to achieve greater efficiencies in the warehouse. The continued growth of the "long tail" that are slow movers combined with a scarcity of available labor and the complexity of route-stop sequencing makes automation a good option. But to justify investments you have to look beyond the labor savings alone. – Frank Jewell, Food and Beverage Industry Leader, Fortna Inc.

Cheaper, better robots will replace human workers in the world's factories at a faster pace over the next decade, pushing labor costs down 16 percent, according to the Boston Consulting Group.

This holiday season, Amazon's little helper is an orange, 320-pound robot called Kiva.

Material handling equipment new orders grew 8.8 percent in 2013 and are forecasted to grow 8.0 percent to 9.0 percent for 2014 and 2015, according to the latest Material Handling Equipment Manufacturing Forecast (MHEM) released by MHI.

A neighbor down the street put in a new brick walk last summer. Each brick was identical, which made it easy to stack them alongside each other for a seamless path. If only palletizing were that simple. But as warehouse workers contend with boxes of all shapes and sizes, a one-size-fits-all pallet pattern just won’t cut it.

Aiming to specialize in the outdoor sports industry, ITS Logistics finds it essential to swap out its WMS, while simultaneously retooling key processes at two Nevada distribution centers.