Somewhere in the middle of nowhere, a product dangles its legs over the edge of its shelf space in the warehouse and waits patiently – shoulder to shoulder with electric toothbrushes, intelligent vacuum cleaning robots and automatic dog doors. A click on a mobile phone screen several hundred kilometres away will soon bring its wait to an end. The patient product is searched for and found – two hands reach for it, carry it away and pack it in cool cardboard, the colour of which is reminiscent of tree bark. An address label is neatly emblazoned on the belly of the parcel. So the product becomes a package and the long journey begins.
“Even in the age of digital transformation and automation processes, most products in modern warehouses are still sought by people, manually transported between the rows of shelves with large shopping carts and assembled into an order,” explains Christian Landschützer from the Institute of Logistics Engineering at TU Graz. His passion for logistics developed out of the desire to make “technical equipment better”. His Goal? Getting the product from the warehouse to its destination as environmentally friendly and efficiently as possible.
Switch to the Planet research article about logistics on TU Graz News+Stories to learn more about the weak points in the supply chain and whow researchers at TU Graz try to improve them.