AUTOMATION DRIVE
Artificial intelligence is the hot topic in industry these days and Combilift has put together a special R&D team to focus on developing a range of automated forklifts.
“There is a lot of technology out there that can do this, but pulling it all together to make it work is the task,” says managing director Martin McVicar.
Already, more than 50pc of Combilift forklifts are electric-powered and customers are now looking for self-driving forklifts too. Other players in the market are focused on designing equipment for huge greenfield warehouse sites for the likes of Amazon, he says.
“But what we are focused on over the next two to three years is to develop automated forklift trucks that can operate in existing warehouses. We will have a Combilift vehicle that can go into an existing warehouse, regardless of the shape or size, and it can be self-taught to do the task in the existing premises.”
This allows his customers to continue using existing warehouses, even if they want to move to automated equipment.
“They won’t need to rebuild their warehouses. Using what they already have is much better in terms of investment and carbon footprint.”
Nevertheless, McVicar says that automation will, for the next five years at least, remain a relatively small part of Combilift’s business.
“We are trying to get our customers to focus on optimisation before automation. You can get carried away with automation but we offer free warehouse design.
“We have a team of nine engineers who prepare free warehouse plans for our clients that show, combined with using our equipment, how much space they can save and how many more pallets they can store.
“The free warehouse design package is one of our marketing tools, but it is very visual and makes it easy to decide on return on investment. No other forklift people do that.”