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New logistics industry trends discussed in the latest edition of the ‘Trends in Logistics’ Report
Providing an overview of the business climate, consumer demands and technological developments, Toyota Material Handling Europe releases its 2024 edition of the Trends in Logistics Report, which highlights a recovering economy, increased focus on environmental and social governance, and an ongoing trend towards AI and automation to combat challenges in the labour market.
To continuously monitor trends in the logistics landscape, Toyota Material Handling Europe established its innovation office, which helps shape the company’s own business and technical development plans and provides valuable information to customers, as they make their own plans in a fast-changing industry.
Data is sourced through collaboration with key organisations such as the Fraunhofer Institute for Material Flow, Logistics IML and Interact Analysis, and through in-depth ‘search for friction’ discussions with leading customers. The input from these collaborations is plotted on Toyota’s ‘trend radar’ which aims to map the impact of all developments in terms of timeframe and whether they will influence the industry from a business or technical perspective.
“We try to maintain an overview of all developments by using a proven methodology in the form of a radar system, which helps us to see where we need to be most reactive,” explains Hans Larsson, Director of Strategic Innovation at Toyota Material Handling Europe, “The work we do is continuous and ongoing, but once a year we take a snapshot of the trends that we see and publish our annual report, which informs our own people but is also intended to help anyone working in the European logistics industry”.
The 2024 report describes an improving business outlook with anticipated GDP (gross domestic product) growth and slowing inflation, but also with ongoing uncertainties driven by geopolitical tensions. Buying habits of consumers result in an ongoing steady growth in e-commerce, although significant differences in online habits among European countries remain.
“Undoubtedly the biggest area of focus is on ESG (Environment, Social and Governance), with new European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS) coming into effect this year, which will affect over 50,000 companies across Europe,” Larsson continues, “. This will increase pressure on new developments to lower CO2 emissions in many areas, as examples we see a lot of work going on around renewable energy, more energy efficient products and carbon free steel.”
From a technological perspective the main headlines are safety, automation and AI. “Safety is closely linked to ESG, and we are seeing a lot of focus on new technologies to protect people working in warehouse environments,” Larsson adds, “and one of the obvious ways to protect people is to move towards automated solutions. Automation is big in order picking, which reflects the continuous growth in e-commerce and the challenges that we are seeing in the labour market.” Finally, the area of AI is developing extremely fast, and in logistics it can be used in advanced vision technology, real time location systems and in simulation and forecasting.