One of the unfortunate realities of the warehousing industry is that it isn't particularly safe. Of the 2.8 million nonfatal workplace injuries and illnesses in 2019, approximately 8% came from the warehousing industry, with injuries occurring at a rate of 4.8 for every 100 full-time workers. According to a report from Liberty Mutual, nonfatal industries in warehousing and transportation cost companies more than $84 billion per week in 2018 – that's around $240,000 per year for each of the 18,171 warehouses that were surveyed.
Multinational conglomerate Honeywell (NASDAQ: HON) is hoping to solve that problem and boost productivity at the same time. The corporation announced Thursday that it will be unveiling robotic technology that can automate the unloading of pallets, reducing the potential for injury and mitigating the effect of labor shortages.
Honeywell's new Smart Flexible Depalletizer is driven by machine learning and advanced vision and perception technologies to fill in for the thousands of pallets that are picked by hand in warehouses across the country every day. Picking pallets manually can lead to human error and, of course, a variety of injuries, including being struck by falling objects or harmed while moving pallets with ...
