ABSTRACT
The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the relevance of goods delivery in urban areas. However, this activity often generates negative environmental impact and several technologies have been proposed in recent years to reduce it, thus forming a complex innovation landscape characterized by different levels of maturity and effects on the City Logistics (CL) system. This complexity causes a deep uncertainty over the future of CL. This paper aims to tackle this uncertainty by forecasting the future of a set of CL technologies. A Delphi survey has been submitted to experts of this field to achieve a stable consensus over 33 projections related to 7 CL technologies for the year 2030. Results show that real-time data collection will help the coordination process between stake-holders, engendering an increased awareness over the value of using logistics data as well as its potential drawbacks. Moreover, experts share a positive attitude towards the expansion of Parcel Lockers, which should be monitored by public authorities to avoid a negative impact on land use. Finally, technologies such as drones and crowd-logistics have drawn the lowest level of consensus due to their lower level of maturity, which arouse the necessity to further explore several issues such as legal and technical barriers.
ABSTRACT
In recent years, the changing market needs due to the dramatic increase of e-commerce and the effects of Covid-19 pandemic have caused a growing demand for supply chain operations. This dynamic business context is also associated with relevant technological and innovative modifications. In the logistics sector, automated warehouses play a crucial role in dealing more effectively with this development trend. For this reason, they are a relevant topic in universities and engineering faculties. Nevertheless, these systems mostly find application and implementation in the industrial sector, determining a significant detachment from the academic sphere. This usually results in a not complete awareness of university students related to the development and operations of such structures. Therefore, an automated warehouse made up by an innovative Automated Storage and Retrieval System and a Mobile Industrial Robot fleet recently installed in a university laboratory was showed to a group composed of 62 engineering students with different academic background. Moreover, a simulation was carried out, physically reproducing the main operations of a distribution centre, namely receiving, kitting, picking, and shipping processes. The students perception related to the automated warehouses was then evaluated through a questionnaire submitted at the end of the experience. The survey demonstrated that most of the students was interested in topics related to the industrial logistics, despite many of them never saw an automated warehouse before the laboratory test. Furthermore, the large majority of the students evaluated positively the simulation and they affirmed that the proposed experience significantly enriched their knowledge about logistics automation. Finally, many students declared that thanks to the test, the interest towards the automated warehouses increased and more than 50% started considering the idea of working in the logistics sector. © 2022, AIDI - Italian Association of Industrial Operations Professors. All rights reserved.