Cargo couture: selecting tailored, wearable tech for your collection

Models strut down the catwalk as fashion giants look on – viewers take note of the product’s material, fit and whether the item is “Prêt-à-Porter,” or ready to wear. Keep in mind, this show is only one of a slew of stakeholders in haute couture have attended worldwide and now they must select pieces from this mass assortment to include in their seasonal capsule collections of products. Like designers sifting through the most recent trends in the global haute couture that take the world of fashion by storm each season, wearable tech is the latest trend emerging as a hot segment in the burgeoning wave of technological innovations strutting down the air cargo and logistics runway. However, in this burgeoning wave of new products on the market leaders in air cargo and logistics must practice discernment in what pieces to include in their “closets.” “It’s important to maintain a nuanced view of the technology and how it will improve your specific case,” DB Schenker Americas director of innovation and e-commerce John Stikes told Air Cargo World on the issue. “A product may be advertised as improving a process x%, but may function differently in different product lines or uses, like e-commerce, freight and logistics buildings.” With this in mind, companies are learning using the selected technology, such as scanner gloves and augmented and virtual reality specs to their individual ops, allows them to strengthen the role of the human workforce in operations. And through this process the pieces have evolved to now be mobile, ergonomic, multi-use, gamified and customizable. Reflecting the spirit of well-known American fashion consultant Tim Gunn, stakeholders in air cargo and logistics are experts in learning how to “make it work.” Functional fashion Unlike haute couture of the runway, wearable tech seen in air cargo, manufacturing and logistics values functionality – both ergonomic and efficient – to support operations. High heels simply will not do. With this in mind, significant strides in developing wearable tech in the industry have been made over the past two decades, leading to immense benefits for air cargo and logistics. While RF scanners have long been a mainstay in the DHL Supply Chain’s distribution centers since the 1990s, the company has developed the product over the past ten years to be hands-free. Now workers can wear the scanner on their wrist with a glove to scan barcodes of parcels, which frees up their hands for ergonomic functions like picking. “This becomes especially useful when workers are picking a lot of cases that may be upwards of 10 or 20 pounds as you really need both hands,” DHL Supply Chain VP Solutions Design North America Adrian Kumar said. “You don’t want one of your hands with an RF gun in it.” At some facilities, like its freight hub in Hanover-Langenhagen opened last June, DHL said it will use the glove scanners to make it easier for terminal staff to consolidate freight. Studies by U.S.-based scanner glove manufacturer Zebra reported that independent and time motion studies of workers using glove scanners resulted in a 5% to 30% increase in user productivity, depending on application and environment. The company also found up to a 50% reduction in workers’ physical muscle effort when using scanner gloves, as compared to a legacy hand-held scanner for high volume scanning and picking. The scanners on gloves are also getting smaller and lighter as the technology evolves. German-based glove scanner manufacturer ProGlove, which first began developing its products in Munich in 2016 and now has customers including Lufthansa, BMW, Audi, Volkswagen, Ford, Staples and IKEA, has reduced the weight of scanners in its products to 1.5 ounces, less than 10% of the overall weight of traditional pistol scanners. Beyond freeing up employees’ hands, the device has progressed to support mobile use of the product. Back when the integrator giant first leveraged the scanner technology in 1995 it was still tethered to a reader device, which would get caught in things, UPS VP of IT Robin Hensley explained. To resolve this issue, UPS developed the device to transfer data read by the scanner to their internal warehouse management system via Bluetooth and Wifi in its distribution centers where the product is used. The move set a precedent for functionality and today, most scanner gloves are wireless. Many modern scanner gloves, like those produced by Zebra, also include real-time alert functions. This way, if a worker is loading a package into an incorrect vehicle for example, within a few seconds the scanner will emit an audible tone and visual message on its display unit to indicate to the worker an error has occurred. With real-time alerts, workers can fix problems at the source before they become downstream challenges. Specs for tailored virtual and augmented reality experiences Beyond advances in ergonomic and functional capabilities, wearable tech pieces such as headsets and smart glasses represent the next leap in developing tech particularly due to the fact that they offer so many customizable and varied uses. These pieces really are where the tailored facet of wearable tech holds immense potential to be tailored for the specific needs of the user through virtual and augmented reality. Smart glasses integrate analog work with digital technology through augmented reality and connect to companies’ individual cloud-based platforms via Wifi and Bluetooth, to enable the user direct and instant access to a server of information. Headsets, meanwhile, take the user into a virtual reality space and increasingly allow users to interact with objects within that space. With these functions companies are leveraging the products for a variety of operations. Most recently, headsets are being leveraged for employee training, while smart glasses can be found supporting vision-picking ops in warehouses. UPS uses headsets, which combine goggles and earpieces, to take employees into a virtual modality for driver safety training. UPS first began developing its virtual reality program using the headsets in 2017. In the driver safety training modality, employees are required to “drive” a package delivery in the realistic virtual space to complete safety training. In the space, as in real on-road training, employees can identify hazards they may see to show they are aware of their surroundings. After the employees identify safety requirements correctly, the system processes this as points in the training. However, in the early stages of development, UPS realized that it had to adapt the devices to specifically suit the training. While the headsets could process hand motions like pointing and gesturing, it is important for employees to keep their hands on the wheel. “So we modified the technology for our usage and added voice activation to the headset. So if a driver’s driving, they can speak verbal instructions and say, ‘I see the speed limit. I see the stop sign. I see another car entering the intersection,’” Hensley explained. “In addition to scoring points on the training, this prepares drivers for occasional drives with supervisors on the road. So they’re actually practicing the exact same way that the on-road supervisors want them to act in reality.” In general, Hensley said, the program allows UPS to utilize its workforce more efficiently and ensure safety in its operations. But it is difficult to determine metrics regarding how it improves processes as this would be measuring avoidance numbers, or the number of accidents avoided due to the trainings. UPS said however that it is receiving good feedback from team members and employees that used the program. “Even if you can’t measure an avoidance cost, the team members say they feel better prepared for the job. And if we avoided even one accident or someone being hurt, that’s huge,” Hensley said. Additionally, team members also find the training fun and gamifies the process, which while intangible, is still a benefit to employee satisfaction at UPS. The virtual reality training is currently being used at all nine of UPS’ Integrated training facilities in the United States but the company is also being adapted for use globally. In the global rollout of the program the training modality will be customized for the different rules and languages of countries in which it will be used. UPS did not share a specific timeline for the rollout, but the project demonstrates the massive potential for broad yet specific application of the technology. Following on the heels of headsets, smart glasses are bridging the gap between virtual space and physical reality. DHL was an early adopter of the smart glass technology and began testing the product in its “vision picking” warehouse operations beginning in 2015. Vision picking leverages smart glasses to replace the mix of handheld scanners, “put-wall” light systems and paper pick lists traditionally used across the logistics industry for package picking operations. The traditional process of picking items can consume a significant amount time as it requires workers to move back and forth between physically recording, scanning and moving orders. However, use of smart glasses eliminates many of these time-wasters to make identifying and processing the picking order completely hands free and more efficient. Employees put on the smart glasses, which communicate visually to the worker where to go in the warehouse, what unit to pick and where to take the order once picked. The glasses can also scan and respond to voice commands in processing orders, which then upload immediately into a cloud platform. Because of this instantaneous process, the glasses can alert the worker if there is a mistake, which can be immediately corrected. This avoids ripples further down the supply chain which may have otherwise required time and or money to correct. According to smart glass manufacture Ubimax, smart glasses can reduce unnecessary travel time in these operations by 40% and increased the efficiency of picks by 18%. Ultimately the system increases productivity, reduces errors and makes the process more user-friendly for employees’ daily work. “We’ve received really good feedback. Sometimes when we have employees go back to using the old technology they complain and say they prefer using the smart glasses, which they say are more intuitive and make them more productive,” said Kumar. Kumar also explained some of the challenges DHL initially faced in developing the first iterations of the hardware. “In the beginning we had to figure out how to integrate the smart glasses into the warehouse management system via middleware, and then there were challenges associated with the battery life and how to ergonomically communicate to the workers what to pick. Since then, however, we’ve ironed out those kinks,” he said. In May this year, he expounded, DHL Supply Chain deployed the latest version of the Google smart glasses in its operations. These second-generation glasses have a longer battery life, faster processors, better voice recognition and shorter charging times. While DHL said it mainly uses Google glasses for its four current operations in North America, the company is planning a rollout of more operations in South America and Europe. Beyond its work with Google, the integrator began pilot testing of smart glasses for its Netherlands warehouse vision picking operations in partnership with smart glass manufacture Ubimax last June. Curating to remain relevant in future seasons Ultimately, although wearable tech has come a long way and provides real benefits to users, it would behoove companies curious about the technology to consider the bottom line of adding the trend to their closet. “Companies need to determine how much [wearable tech products] they really need, which will determine how many devices they get, which ultimately drives their ROI,” Stikes said. In some cases, even when companies have found the product to be useful in certain places, they have chosen not to leverage the equipment in other operations across their broader company. DHL, for example, said it has not completely employed use of vision-picking across all its operations yet, some of which use older technology, due to this fact. “At the next opportunity the numbers crunch right we will roll out the new technology, but ultimately the timing of this comes down to return on investment and making sure the business case is there,” Kumar said. In spite of all this number crunching, the tech is there and the increasing flexibility of the products for companies to tailor-fit to their operations suggests great promise in the rollout of these pieces across air cargo and logistic industries’ future operations.

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