Since the beginning of the year, I’ve been employed by a new employer and am responsible there as a Product Owner for goods receiving. My new company has grown strongly over the past two years. But rapid growth also brings challenges for which solutions need to be found.

That’s why I immediately signed up when a visit to LogiMAT in Stuttgart was proposed. LogiMAT is a trade fair focusing on intralogistics, i.e. the movement of goods within a warehouse. And where do goods movements in a warehouse begin? Exactly, in goods receiving. My hopes were high that one or another manufacturer would present innovative ideas and solutions at the fair.

We decided that for a fair of this size, it makes more sense to plan for two days. My colleagues opted for an overnight stay, I wanted to commute the 190km. That was definitely a mistake. In my consideration, I had completely underestimated the traffic in the greater Stuttgart area. So I didn’t arrive at the meeting point at 10:00 AM as planned, but only well after 11:00 AM. I spent 40 minutes looking for a parking space in the parking garage alone - despite the guidance system. They definitely don’t have traffic planning and control figured out.

Once in the hall, I was initially overwhelmed. Thanks to Corona, it’s been a long time since I’ve seen such crowds. But the crowd quickly dispersed throughout the halls of the huge exhibition grounds, and we with them. Starting logically at Hall 1. Known and unknown companies presented their solutions for transporting goods within a warehouse.

Disillusionment quickly set in for me. Exciting innovations were rare. Most vendors showed only familiar things like conveyor belts, automatic small parts warehouses or similar. Nothing that hasn’t been on the market for over a decade. Some booths had difficulty highlighting what the strength of their product or even its purpose was. Other booths, on the other hand, were extremely unexciting. Who goes to an intralogistics trade fair to look at barrier tapes?

Every now and then, however, there was an interesting product that, although not surprising, was quite new to the market. But I also quickly realized that these products, while having potential, aren’t yet mature. I found robotic arms with suction cups that can grab individual items exciting. But even here, something was always missing for my needs. Either too little lifting capacity, no partial removal from the container, or simply so slow that it takes five robots to replace one employee.

At the end of the first day, my feet hurt quite a bit. We had managed just under half and covered over 10km. And 190km of highway were still ahead of me. I should have taken the hotel after all.

Day 2 started better, the traffic wasn’t so bad (I also left earlier) and I was on time. A presentation about innovations had piqued our interest, and lost it quite quickly. This wasn’t about specific developments, but very generally about the necessity and planning of innovation projects. I felt transported back to university.

If not robots for handling items, then at least autonomous solutions for transporting pallets from the unloading area to booking in. These were in a hall not yet visited. Here it was much more exciting for me. Robots that pick up pallets and drive from A to B were on offer. Many not able to do that directly from the ground. But also some with real forks. Just not as autonomous as advertised. Most models require intensive training by the manufacturer and only drive on firmly defined routes. An obstacle? The device stands there perplexed. Changes in the warehouse? The manufacturer has to come on site and retrain everything. Flexible and autonomous is something different for me.

But the software hall disappointed me the most. Pictures of software, mostly some warehouse management system among many, little interesting. I had hoped for item recognition with cameras combined with machine learning or AI. In vain. Here too, the products shown were conservative or far from productive use.

Somewhat disappointed and exhausted, it was time for lunch. No chance at the fair. Every food stand had waiting lines like at Europa-Park. Who could have expected so many visitors. The tickets aren’t sold in advance after all. Oh wait, they are. So it became our second day of McDonald’s and for me the realization: I don’t like McDonald’s anymore.

Conclusion

Interesting Market Overview

Even though my text has been rather negative so far, the two days at LogiMAT were interesting. You get a good overview of the market and current developments. You see what works, and also what doesn’t work yet.

But this also shows that companies are less innovative than I had expected. Autonomous vehicles that drive fixed routes on glued-on lines aren’t high tech for me. By now a reasonably talented YouTuber can build that with a Raspberry PI. Sure, without integration and scaling, but still not a leap into the future.

For my projects, it’s still helpful to know what solutions currently exist. And which don’t exist yet. So what framework I can work within.

I can definitely recommend a visit to LogiMAT to anyone who works in logistics. For an overview, one day is sufficient though, if you focus and don’t have appointments. But as soon as you have one or two longer stops, it gets tight with one day.