Technological innovations

Globalization is relentless — a fact that intralogistics providers have had to face for a long time. The economic principle of procurement, production and sales only works if material and product flows are smooth. Organizing and steering such complex processes requires know-how, professionalism and willingness to innovate. Technological developments in the field of logistics are driven by ever-higher demands placed on information and communication systems, mounting energy prices resulting from scarce resources, and growing environmental awareness.

Jungheinrich recognized the sign of the times early on, focussing on energy efficiency and drive technology at CeMAT 2008 in Hanover, Germany, the sector‘s lead trade fair. Centre stage was taken by ‘Concept ’08,’ a stacker featuring an entirely new energy storage and drive concept. Technology deployed in the concept truck, a battery-powered drive train fed by lithium-ion batteries, has the potential to become an alternative to drive trains running on hydrogen fuel cells, which are still being researched.

Jungheinrich also injected trend-setting stimulus into the field of radio communications, enabling wireless interaction among material handling equipment, payload carriers and warehouse management systems. The company has developed several ways of uniquely assigning pallets in warehouses. They run the gamut from the automated scanning of a single pallet‘s barcode to the sequential automatic detection of multiple pallets using RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) technology. Contactless item identification increases the transparency and efficiency of intralogistics processes.

In addition to these technological trends, Jungheinrich again used Hanover as a forum for demonstrating a host of new features and refinements integrated into its existing offering of warehousing equipment and counterbalanced trucks.