Having implemented NetSuite previously, Midwest Equipment (MWE) faced mobility gaps in their warehouse operations. The initial mobile warehouse solution they chose eliminated the need for paper pick slips and manual data entry into NetSuite. However, the service and support for this solution deteriorated over time, leading to stability and connectivity issues. Transactions would take up to 15 minutes to reflect in NetSuite, and the system would often time out, requiring redoing of transactions. Additionally, MWE experienced login issues and difficulties with customizations, making the solution frustrating to use.

Wanting to improve their warehouse performance, PetShop.co.uk faced inefficiencies due to manual processes. After moving into a larger warehouse in 2017, it became clear that an inventory management solution was necessary. The company was fulfilling a large volume of orders daily, but manual processes were slowing them down. They were printing picking tickets and distributing them individually to pickers and packers, leading to errors and delays, especially during peak periods. Additionally, the absence of accurate, reliable data was a significant challenge. Stock was often misplaced and re-ordered, resulting in surplus and tying up cash in redundant stock. This inefficiency jeopardized the value of their balance sheet, prompting the need for a better warehouse management solution.

Bergendahl’s Food faces the challenge of securing efficient warehousing with necessary capacity without building a new central distribution center and increasing salary costs. The company has an annual growth rate of 10-15%, and the number of categories and different items increases rapidly. The complexity in the supply chain is further complicated by the growing demand for perishable goods such as bread, meat, and fruits & vegetables. The central distribution center needs to be expanded in just four or five years to handle the growth and secure profitability. The major challenge is to handle and facilitate smooth growth and secure profitability while transitioning from manual, labor-intensive goods handling to increasingly automated warehousing.

In 2013, Trinchero Family Estates decided to centralize its bottling and distribution with its production in a new facility that would leverage automation. The facility had to support seamless product movement between production and distribution as well as accommodate products received from co-manufacturers and other TFE bottling sites. The primary challenge was achieving the throughput and speed desired. The goal was to run 3-4 bottling lines while also bringing in product from co-manufacturers and bottling sites in Napa Valley. They needed to move product into storage fast and ship fast. Other challenges included consolidating inventory from two distribution centers into one high-density location and providing visibility and control of product as it moved through bottling and distribution.

ASKO ROGALAND AS faced significant challenges due to changing supply chains and general market growth. To maintain their position as Norway's leading wholesaler and distributor of groceries, they needed to enhance their logistics strategy. The primary challenge was to automate their distribution centers to stay ahead in the market. The existing manual processes were not sufficient to handle the increasing demand and complexity of operations. The company needed a solution that could optimize space utilization, improve pick accuracy, and reduce dependency on labor. Additionally, they aimed to enhance ergonomics for operators and reduce costs associated with damaged goods and human resources.

The company launched at the end of 2014, and now has more than 200,000 members. About 20,000 new members join each month, feeding the demand that increased sales 500 percent from March 2015 to March 2016. Within its first year, Thrive Market outgrew its original Los Angeles-area distribution facility because of the growth of memberships, increasing order volume and a growing number of SKUs — up from 2,500 at launch to more than 4,000 today. Consumer demand for healthy and convenient food is expected to continue to rise, with e-grocery sales increasing 21 percent annually through 2018, compared to slightly more than 3 percent for physical supermarkets, according to BI Intelligence research. These market factors prompted Thrive Market to make additional investments in its supply chain, including a new DC in Batesville, Indiana, to serve the Eastern half of the country.

Livzon Pharmaceutical Group Inc. faced the challenge of managing rapid growth and stringent quality requirements in the Chinese pharmaceutical market. With a 30 percent annual revenue growth, the company needed to build a new production and distribution site, Livzon Industrial Park, in Zhuhai near Macau. The primary challenge was to efficiently distribute products, perform continuous quality control, and meet regulatory requirements. The company required an advanced logistics system to handle the increasing demand and ensure smooth operations.

To keep up with growth, Byrne Dairy looked for efficiencies at its central cold storage distribution center, Syracuse Cold Storage. This 100,000-square-foot facility boasted 9,000 pallet positions with 16 loading docks. The company wanted to learn more about equipment and operations that could improve material handling processes and material flow at the warehouse.

Because EMN was merging three facilities, the company looked to maximize its square footage and improve operator productivity. Activity never ceased during a day’s shift. Once pallets of wine and liquor cases arrived and were unloaded, they were moved to a staging location and distributed throughout the facility. They were then scanned and prepared for outbound shipping. This encouraged EMN to better develop its process and material flow handling.

Fabiano Brothers faced significant productivity challenges as they consolidated their operations from four facilities into two, totaling 390,000 square feet. The primary goal was to maintain their annual beer sales of about eight and a half million cases while optimizing space and increasing lift truck productivity. Additionally, they aimed to enhance the productivity of their order picking process and implement ergonomic lift trucks to reduce operator stress. The company needed a comprehensive solution that would integrate receiving, replenishment, and racking to achieve increased efficiency, cost savings, and productivity.

The NSLC is especially proactive in protecting its biggest asset — its people. The NSLC encourages all employees to take personal responsibility for themselves and the equipment they use to do their jobs. But managers needed better insight into the daily activities of the operators to be able to support this, along with more information that would allow them to make general warehouse decisions and improvements.

Consolidating two warehouse spaces into one meant a chance for Pacific Coast Warehouse to gain efficiency and improve control over product movement. It also meant considering a different warehouse design and installing a new fleet of lift trucks to work in racking that is significantly higher than the racking in the previous locations. As part of its research on which material handling company would obtain the order for the new lift trucks, Pacific Coast Warehouse tested all the competition, both in a controlled environment and on site in one of its facilities. The decision came down to projected value in productivity and ease of financing.

Selecting the ideal fleet of lift trucks can be a challenging task for any company, especially for businesses with seasonal demands. PartyLite Gifts Inc. faced an equipment selection quandary due to seasonal demand fluctuation. During the holiday season, PartyLite often sees a peak in business, but it relies on maximum uptime from its lift truck fleet to move products and prepare orders for shipping all year round. The challenge was to handle seasonal demand fluctuation for PartyLite’s products efficiently while minimizing costs for lift trucks that are needed only during peak demand times.

This steady increase in growth and production, as well as the consolidation of its various facilities, caused Rawlings to re-evaluate its lift truck fleet and maintenance program. In search of consultation and service, Rawlings turned to Heubel Material Handling, a Raymond Sales and Service Center it had worked with for more than 10 years. Rawlings quickly discovered that Heubel’s service plan and lift trucks by The Raymond Corporation helped the company increase productivity, decrease downtime and streamline its maintenance, all while remaining environmentally friendly and dependable. “I would personally recommend Heubel’s equipment and its maintenance plan,” says Terrie Semsch, safety manager at Rawlings. “We deal with a seasonal environment in which we experience surges in workload, so we need our equipment to operate consistently. Heubel’s integrated service, quality equipment and comprehensive maintenance ensure we are up and running in top performance, and this is something we can now depend on.”

The cold environment of refrigerated and freezer warehousing presents significant challenges for warehouse equipment, facility managers, and employees. U.S. Cold Storage, a company with over 110 years of experience in refrigerated warehouse operations, needed to ensure that their lift trucks could operate efficiently in severe temperatures. The company recently opened two new facilities in Wilmington, Ill., and Lebanon, Ind., and required reliable lift trucks to handle up to 100 million pounds of product per month between these locations. The challenge was to find lift trucks that could withstand the harsh conditions and maintain high productivity levels.

In Ireland, local regional authorities are not responsible for waste management, and the Irish customers are free to change provider if they are not content with the service. Ciaran Brady, Head of Resource Recovery AES, stated that it is imperative for AES to meet and exceed the service expectations of their customers. Previously, they were not always able to do so. AES handles recyclable, organic, and general waste, keeping approximately 165 vehicles busy with 400-500 collections per route on average. The challenge was to meet the full range of customer service expectations and improve efficiency.

Dietz & Watson faced significant challenges in managing their growing distribution needs. Their existing home-grown system was outdated and inefficient, leading to a lack of storage space and operational inefficiencies. The company needed a strategic implementation plan that would minimize operational impact while providing a high level of service to their customers. They required a solution that could handle various temperature-controlled areas and manage multiple product lines effectively. Additionally, they needed to ensure zero downtime during the implementation process to avoid disrupting their daily operations.

Houwzer’s digital delivery system is built on a highly complex, monolithic API with extensive personalization and localization to support diverse customer needs across different real estate markets. The company lacked visibility into all the possible ways its API was being used or how it was behaving in the real world. This created security concerns, as Houwzer could not know where or how sensitive data was exchanged, or if bad actors could exploit vulnerabilities to gain unauthorized access to private information.

The evolving video market in Argentina has brought demand for feature-rich OTT services. Video service providers are migrating from traditional RF delivery toward IP-enabled services and offering sophisticated features on par with Tier 1 operators in the United States. In keeping with market demand, Cablevisión Argentina envisioned a true TV Everywhere experience for its subscribers – one that offered true cross-platform compatibility and support for every possible subscriber device. Customers in the region use Chromecast heavily so it was imperative to provide DRM support for this use case. As an innovative and forward-looking provider, Cablevisión Argentina is vested in bringing its subscribers a powerful user interface and large number of supported devices packaged together with compelling, premium content. Rapidly evolving technologies and protocols push operators to adopt more nimble business models – ones that will scale in the future. Cablevisión Argentina sought to deliver seamless integration of device types so subscribers could access video on mobile devices, tablets and personal computers. Subscribers wanted to be able to start watching content on one device and then seamlessly continue watching it on a different device. Cablevisión Argentina was determined to solve all challenges faced by digital TV operators in the Latin America region: Offering a high quality, seamless viewing experience powered by expert user-interface features and a personalized recommendations engine. Harmonizing subscriber access rights across different networks, screens and locations thereby enabling a frictionless user experience. Conforming to stringent licensing conditions for premium content and preventing unlawful content access.

Swisscom, a leading telecom provider in Switzerland, faced the challenge of upgrading its existing IPTV service to meet the growing demands of its customers. The company needed to enhance the user experience, provide more content, and support multi-screen viewing. Additionally, Swisscom aimed to reduce costs and time-to-market by leveraging an Android-based platform for its new service, Swisscom TV 2.0. The challenge also included ensuring robust content protection and seamless integration with existing infrastructure.

Boston Group, Inc. faced the challenge of streamlining the development and fabrication of merchandising display and power systems to compress lead times and accelerate product delivery to customers. The company needed to move from 2D to 3D design to better showcase product concepts to visually oriented merchandising professionals and to become more efficient in their development processes. Shortening delivery and lead times was essential for competing successfully in the market.

Maximize thermoformed product design throughput by improving quality, streamlining processes, and leveraging surfacing tools.

Resolve design data compatibility issues and improve teamwork during the development of components and assemblies for custom-designed conveyor and separator systems to shorten design cycles and satisfy customer demand for shorter lead-times.

Make product development more efficient by facilitating collaboration between industrial design and mechanical engineering.

Accelerate development of the first piloted hybrid airplane/airship that meets governmental safety requirements for commercial use to transport people and freight to remote locations.

Conformal cooling channels, which uniformly cool injection molds and the plastic parts inside, have long represented the ultimate productivity goal in injection-molding manufacturing. Cooling channels that conform exactly to the geometry of the injection-molded part would make quick, uniform cooling of the molded plastic possible, resulting in better quality parts, faster cycle times, decreased part waste, and reduced energy consumption. To date, conformal cooling channels have remained just a research idea because the traditional techniques used to machine molds, such as milling and drilling, are incapable of producing all of the geometric shapes required. However, a team of researchers from Portland State University (PSU) and RapidMade, a 3D printing, manufacturing, and engineering company based in Portland, Oregon, have secured a federal grant to conduct research and development aimed at determining how to bring conformal cooling channels to the injection-molding industry.

Establish and grow a competitive solar car racing team at Cambridge University to compete for the top award at the World Solar Challenge and demonstrate the incredible potential of solar-powered electric vehicles.

Max Conwell, founder of Naked Eye Lighting, faced the challenge of evolving lighting technology and the need to create innovative and adaptable designs for high-profile clients in the music industry. As lighting technology advanced, Conwell needed to integrate new tools and techniques, such as video projection and 3D pixel mapping, into his designs. Additionally, the wide range of venues and international tours presented logistical challenges, requiring adaptable and versatile lighting solutions that could be easily modified to meet different requirements.

Forest Dickey, founder of Varian Designs, faced the challenge of transforming his passion for furniture design into a viable business. Initially, he struggled with the high costs and uneven quality of reclaimed materials, which led him to source certified, sustainable wood. Additionally, Dickey needed to find a way to balance his artistic vision with the practicalities of running a business, including managing production, marketing, and client relations. The competitive nature of the furniture design industry also posed a challenge, requiring Dickey to continuously innovate and maintain high standards of craftsmanship.

Newhall, California, once a bustling trading center and popular backdrop for western films, experienced a dramatic decline as the suburbs of Los Angeles expanded. This led to struggling businesses and high vacancy rates. The City Council aimed to revitalize the area by re-envisioning the central corridor of Main Street. They diverted traffic to a nearby roadway and added a roundabout to improve traffic flow. However, local businesses were concerned that ongoing construction would hurt their already-sinking bottom lines, and commuters were worried about potential delays caused by the roundabout.