The technology revolution and its role in logistics

The technology revolution and its role in logistics

transporte y tecnología

It is indisputable: new technologies are transforming the global commerce ecosystem and with it, the logistics sector.

The technological innovations of recent years have completely changed the way of doing business globally. With the birth of the internet, it happened as with the arrival of the industrial revolution, as there has been a digital revolution of absolutely everything that has to do with communication, manufacturing processes, business and transactions.

The transformation of international trade is marked by the internet of things (IoT, Internet of Things), by artificial intelligence, by 3D printing and by the blockchain. In fact, we talked about it a few weeks ago in another article about what we expect the logistics of the future to be!

And technology has not only marked a profound evolution in how we work and communicate today, but it has also led to a profound change in the way consumers and businesses acquire their products and raw materials, as well as how these sectors manufacture, control, store and distribute their products.

How has logistics changed thanks to technology?

Actually, logistics is living a real revolution thanks to the rise of online commerce. The Internet has reached practically every corner of our planet providing the opportunity to make thousands of small, medium and large companies known around the world. In this way, today it is possible to acquire raw materials from anywhere, quickly and at a very low cost.

With this, not only has the way in which products and raw materials are currently acquired changed, but also the space in which products are manufactured, stored and controlled, as well as their distribution has evolved.

In relation to the above we refer to the automation and digitalisation of processes. While, a few years ago, it was unthinkable that a single machine would do the “artisan” work of several operators, today it is unthinkable to have several human resources “wasting” their valuable time on something that can do, and in a perfect way, a only robot that also dominates the process from the first second.

The same goes for robots that control warehouses, stock and distribution within any manufacturer’s facilities. 

Although there are still processes in which the human hand is irreplaceable, it is unquestionable that evolution will lead to everything being carried out by less and less people controlled and managed, in the literal sense of the word, by greater number of machines and robots with artificial intelligence, which will save, among other things, money, time and numerous problems. Are there no longer the first restaurants where robots cook and serve?

And of course we cannot forget autonomous transport. While the drones will move the goods between relatively close points, the trucks and autonomous vans will be responsible for doing so to other more distant points.

They are different and complementary ways by which the production and logistics processes are being optimised, which have numerous advantages, such as the reduction of manufacturing and delivery times, the improvement of post-sales care (return, repair etc.) and the process of reverse logistics, the tracking of products and orders in real time, the reduction of incidents, the increasing capacity for internationalisation, the increasingly transparent and secure transactions, multichannel logistics, the increasing marked commitment to the environment and, in short, full customer satisfaction.

We do not know if in ten years the technology will have continued progressing to such an extent that it will suppose a new revolution in the logistics sector, but we hope that the evolution of the next few years will continue to bear fruit in the form of continuous innovations and improvements that allow us to be every more efficient, effective, economical and, most importantly: insurance.