In three years' time, most warehouses will be using augmented reality. So states Laurens Lapre, Vice President of Consulting at GCI. According to Lapre, current technology is already capable of a lot. "With augmented reality glasses, you can recover a lost parcel in a warehouse," he says.
Lapre made this statement on the final day of LMhJ, during a debate on technology in logistics. According to the Vice President of GCI, specialist in information technology, augmented reality is no longer a thing of the future. "The best-known example is of course Pokémon Go, but there are already many possibilities with augmented reality in logistics as well. The most logical, of course, is parcel scanning. More unknown is that the technology is already able to measure the dimensions of a parcel when you pick it up, for example."
A survey of attendees in the room showed that most attendees do not expect order pickers in the Netherlands to prepare orders using augmented reality in the coming years. The technology certainly seems to have a future in logistics, but the question is whether companies will adopt it in the short term. Many attendees say their warehouses are not set up for it at all. "If you already have a large part of your operation automated, it is also easier to implement this. If you don't, then you might have to ask yourself if maybe you should automate faster," Lapre responds.
Furthermore, some expect that not all warehouse workers can handle it. In warehouses, for example, some 20 per cent of people are low-literate. What does this mean for them? According to Lapre, it should not cause any problems: "The beauty of digitisation is precisely that you can use images. People may even need to read less with glasses."
What do you think? Is augmented reality future music or are we going to see more of this in the near future?
Editorial LogistiekProfs
