MMH: What is your number one takeaway from MODEX 2024?
Haggar: To me, MODEX is always a leading indicator on the state of the material handling industry. The record number of attendees combined with the many detailed conversations we had at the show symbolize an industry that’s poised for an increase in volume during the second half of 2024 and into 2025. Customers that were maybe on the fence or putting projects on hold due to concerns over the economy or interest rates are realizing that their business cases simply can’t wait. The whole industry—DMW&H included—is still experiencing the “new normal” need to handle global changes that affect our supply chains and require us to continue to more quickly integrate new technologies into warehousing and distribution
MMH: What are the top market trends that you’re seeing right now?
Haggar: The increase in automation—and specifically storage and retrieval, picking and replenishment—has been pretty amazing to see and be a part of. At MODEX we heard about a lot of real-world deployments of these solutions; that’s a key trend taking place right now. By automating previously-manual operations, companies increase their capacity utilization, labor efficiency and throughput—all while reducing order cycle times. The drivers behind these trends include a real need for speed and efficiency to handle both e-commerce and the labor constraints. When you combine the expectation of same- and next-day delivery with labor unavailability and high turnover, it propels the need to automate. And while there are a lot of automated conveying and sortation systems in place, the current automation trend is focused on storage and retrieval, picking and replenishment. This automation helps workers avoid repetitive tasks, improves the work environment and helps operations deliver faster. It’s effectively the “perfect marriage” of the two (i.e., automation and the workforce) coming together.
MMH: How is DMW&H responding to these market trends?
Haggar: We’re addressing these market trends by investing in new technologies that help us deploy our solutions faster while also providing more flexible and expandable solutions. Our customers have to be able to adapt to all the inevitable future challenges and we’re investing in resources and partnerships with other equipment and system suppliers to integrate those new technologies into our customers’ existing operations. We’ve formed a number of these partnerships as we continue to invest in our own internal integration tools that, in turn, help us quickly and efficiently deliver those technologies to customers.
Link to Modern Materials Handling Article