TRANSFORMATION IS INEVITABLE
LOGISTICS DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION
BEUMER GROUP
TRANSFORMATION IS INEVITABLE
Industry, economy and society are in the midst of digital transformation. It is a fact that it is inevitable since customers do not want to do without the plus in comfort they have become used to in many areas. But what are the consequences? Above all, many of the boundaries between industries so far known are losing importance, and that is precisely where the future challenges lie. The questions that arise are: Who is driving transformation, and will the suppliers of today be those of tomorrow? At any rate, BEUMER Group is getting in shape for the digital future.
Logistics is one of the industries where the influence of digital transformation is particularly strong since digital logistics renders substantial benefits in costs, transparency and speed. The smart integration of digital technologies can especially make intralogistics more efficient and environmentally safe. The ever-growing online commerce is driving this process. The degree of networking, automation and system integration increases along with the progressive development of goods flows in e-commerce and the topic of returns involved in it. Today ' s supply chains are consistently organised and interlinked – from the sources of raw material up to the delivery of products to the customer ' s front door and beyond, up to returns, disposal and recycling.
As a system supplier, BEUMER Group provides e-commerce companies and logistics centres with high-speed sortation systems. Their capacities can be adapted to the constantly increasing demands of users. " We must constantly improve our products to increase our competitiveness so that our customers can reduce their costs and optimise their processes," explains Dr Christoph Beumer, Chairman and CEO of BEUMER Group based in Beckum, Germany. For this reason, the system supplier has integrated innovation management into his strategy for many years now and applied for nearly 100 patents.
For its consistent and multifaceted commitment in this field, BEUMER Group received the Axia Award 2017, which is awarded to medium-sized businesses for their successful and sustainable corporate management. In the age of digital transformation, however, it is not only the improvement of internal processes that counts, but also the development of new
116 PECM Issue 34 business models. It is not merely a matter of optimising existing concepts. " We have to create something new. Machinery and systems become more efficient and offer ever-increasing speeds," says Dr Beumer.
Setting new trends instead of missing them
The worst-case scenario of any industry is simply missing out on new trends. This may have disastrous consequences for market leaders. One example is analogue photography. Agfa, a German company, succeeded in gaining an excellent reputation in more than 100 years of company history. Agfa developed the first developer fluid for films and the first flash lamp, the first safety film and the first fully automatic camera – but not the first digital camera. This was developed by an engineer of Kodak. His employer, however, kept this innovation unused in a secret drawer for a long time. This soon turned out to be a fatal mistake: In the nineteen-nineties, competitors such as Apple, Casio and Canon introduced the first digital cameras for large-scale use onto the market and swept aside the two most successful photographic companies worldwide up to that date. Those who do not face up to digital transformation in time, will be the losers.
" The mechanical engineering and intralogistics industries may suffer the same fate as regards 3D print technology. If it becomes possible to produce a steel girder using this technology in the future, this will revolutionise the entire sector," predicts Dr Beumer. A completely new kind of warehousing might emerge. Instead of keeping a large stock of spare parts at any time, items would only be printed on demand. The time and number of items could be precisely controlled and expensive ordering processes would be eliminated. " We send the drawings of the spare part to our subsidiaries in Thailand or Brazil, our colleagues print the component via 3D printing and we do not need to transport it by ship across the ocean for weeks," says Dr Beumer.
Augmented reality saves travel time and costs
It will neither be necessary to send qualified service technicians overseas for weeks. The following scenario is quite conceivable: The responsible employees on site are equipped with 3D glasses. They focus on the object with their mobile device. Through auto-ID characteristics on the logistic element, e. g. a conveyor, and an app specially developed for this purpose, information on this element can be displayed, such as circuit diagrams, maintenance instructions or pin assignments. The required data is displayed on the live image of the camera of the device.