A couple of years ago (2018) I held a presentation on a global 3PL summit in Düsseldorf and spoke about “Innovation nurturing in the world of logistics service providers”. The year before (2017) I got hooked up to the world of innovators, start-ups & scale-ups.
Back then, one of my country-teams and I got connected with two global communities that facilitated us in meeting interesting start-ups and innovators, focusing on logistics and supply chain. As a result, I had several weeks in my schedule that included more than thirty “meet & greets” in the Middle East with passionate and energetic teams that showed me their ideas, technologies, products and services. For us to judge if we should hook up with these individual start-ups: to improve our existing services and capabilities or to enhance our portfolio with even new service offerings. And we did…
Innovation in general, also in supply chains, is many times part of discussion between contract partners. But which innovations are needed first? Which ones will work on the longer term? Which innovations will be a unique fit for a single solution or will become generic for a wider audience and purpose?
This made me curious again: which innovations did I mention back in 2018 in Düsseldorf and what is today’s status on them? Out of more than sixty start-up introductions I selected and presented eight of them as most promising. These are the ones that were showcased:
“Jenny the Chatbot”
An AI based solution to be used for making delivery agreements between a shipper, a 3PL company and an end consumer. Well, that one definitely arrived ! Not limited to delivery agreements by the way.
Conversational AI chatbots
Facilitating level one questions on a helpdesk. It arrived, yet this still needs some work as AI supported helpdesks sometimes lock up in circles when you’re digging for the details after the first question.
Drone distribution
Drone delivery was a much-discussed topic back then. But the first real case was implemented, by the start-up we met, at a retailer delivering parcels by drone in Reykjavik in 2018, to customers that could not be reached by road on the other side of a river. Today drones have definitely arrived, have become a solution for specific business cases.
Disposable paper-based trackers
Container and shipment tracking as a cheap alternative for RFID. No hassle also in equipment return as there is no need to return the tracker. A new tracker is printed with the next order. This one is gaining severe traction.
Sidenote: As we speak Qwinn is connected to Blyott, a scale-up supplying Bluetooth stickers for tracking of medical equipment in hospitals. For me the next generation of these disposable trackers.
Smart packaging
Active measurement of usage of consumable products. Even the carton in your fridge would pass information to a system that you’re running out of juice. This one arrived, but needs some more development to really lift off and facilitate production schedules and other supply chain routines.
Robotized picking and moving solutions
Definitely arrived, in many varieties.
Moving storage racks / rack movers
Also definitely arrived, in many varieties.
Fleet electrification via mountable hybrid engines on trailer & truck fleets
Connected with intelligent software to support efficient driving and usage this looked promising, but I haven’t seen this yet at bigger scale in practice. So could need some more work and development.
More than 10 years ago we spoke about “big data”. But in fact, only for a couple of years now we really start to understand and use its potential. Same for IoT. Smart algorithms now process vast amounts of data, enabling new applications, often developed by passionate start-ups.
So, the moral of the story is that innovation is worthwhile to invest in. Start-ups need support even knowing that probably less than 15% will survive. As the ones that remain (and remained) are supplying life changing tools, technologies, products and services. Qwinn’s partner network therefore includes start-ups, and will also grow to secure better, more fast and further integrated solutions to our customers.
Meinderdjan Botman