The Material Handling Blog

Technology and automation have had a place in distribution and supply chains for decades. Typically, high-end automation was reserved for the largest multi-national organizations with ample capital and a vision to improve efficiencies in their supply chain. While the technology adoption curve is much more mature in Europe than North America, N. American business investment in supply chain automation and distribution is increasing rapidly due to changing customer buying behavior, labor shortages, ecommerce adoption, and access to various technologies both mature and emerging. The amount of new technologies emerging to support distribution and supply chain automation is also rapidly increasing; and for good reason.

On any given production line, workers pick up different specialized tools to complete different tasks. End of arm tool changers allow robots to do the same.

When making a decision, it’s important to fully consider the benefits and disadvantages of each available option. Here's how we decided between supercapacitors and batteries when developing our warehouse robots.

At Bastian Solutions' R&D branch, we have seen many intern candidates and interested students apply, all hoping to get into robotics. Here are three characteristics that we look for. They may not be what you think!

In the very near future, robotic picking will become mainstream, facilitating a 24/7 picking and order fulfillment environment. Improvements in a few existing technologies have helped pave the way.

I spent the last year helping some middle school students start a robotics club . We had a ton of fun, some challenges, very little money and in the end ... a very big success. There were quite a few lessons I learned as a professional project manager that, as it turns out, it takes a child to teach (or at least reinforce)... Read More >>

In today's business world, many employees--including myself from time to time--wear multiple hats on a day-to-day basis. These additional responsibilities, combined with a decreasing amount of time in which to do them, create an atmosphere in which out-of-the-box thinking is often lost. Read More >>

When a business decides to automate its palletizing process , there are essentially two choices: robotic or conventional. What are the differences between these two technologies? What are the advantages? First, let's discuss robotic palletizers . The key component in a robotic palletizer is....drum roll please....you guessed it, a robot. A robot is usually defined as an electro-mechanical machine guided by computer or electronic programming, and thus, able to do tasks on its own. Read More >>