There have been all kinds of technological advancements in every single industry in the world these last couple of years or maybe this last decade. While every market has seen a benefit out of those technological innovations, the transportation and logistics industry is the one that saw the most advantages.
The increased usability and spread of the internet enables companies to regulate both their transportation and logistics easily. Smartphones, tablets, and every other smart device that can access the internet provide another great boost for this industry. But, that’s not all. Machine learning and artificial intelligence also have a huge impact on this business.
And to think that we see today with AI is just the beginning, who knows what will happen in the next couple of years. It might be that the transportation and logistics sector of every business will be entirely automated, increasing the efficiency by two or three-fold. At this time, the possibilities seem limitless. We will know about the future in this industry in a couple of years.
However, even today’s technological trends have improved the transportation and logistics sector, and here the most popular ones.
Digitalization
Digitalization has been around for more than 20 years and almost every single market on this planet has already implemented it. We have seen hospitals implementing digital filing, stock firms upgrading their servers, and introducing their employees with advanced systems, etc.
Believe it or not, but the digitalization process is actually still going. Many industries right now are still stuck on filing everything on paper. Not only does this increase the chances of human error and loss of information, but it is several times slower. The logistics industry is still having a hard time transferring to computers, digital payments, and cloud servers.
The reason for this is because most company owners try to delay the expenses that are required for entering this digitalization process. Considering the return on investment, it is very worth it.
Online payments alone will increase the shipping process of products. There is no need for excess documentation on paper because most of the legal work will be done by payment systems such as PayPal, Payoneer, or others. In case you need specialized legal assistance, this law firm can help you – Rolegal.com. Storing and sharing of information is also much easier and faster. All of this just brings more efficiency and less risk. It is a win-win situation.
Improvement in Vehicles
While it might seem like there hasn’t been a lot of technological advancements in vehicles, there have been many improvements that have made them be faster and much more fuel-efficient, effectively reducing a company’s costs, leading to higher profits.
For example, many trucks have been equipped with much better loading and unloading equipment, reducing the risk of worker injury and their loading speed of items. Check out SureWeld‘s aluminum ramps that help with loading and unloading all kinds of cargo.
Cranes have also been equipped with a lot of different measures to ensure that employees always stay safe. Their mobility has also been improved, increasing loading and unloading cargo from freighters or planes.
Artificial Intelligence
I already mentioned that today’s artificial intelligence is just a “baby” and that it is very far away from becoming real AI. Some experts claim that this level of AI that we have right now should be referred to as machine learning because it is not technically artificial intelligence. But, that is a topic for another day, for now, we will stick to the term AI.
Today’s artificial intelligence may seem very young, but it is still very capable of doing complicated tasks. It can handle tasks that a human brain could never even comprehend. In fact, most devices that you use on a daily basis probably use this kind of AI.
For example, all of our smartphones have an operating system that has a “brain” of it is own. Through an AI, the tasks that you do every day on your phone are made to be faster and easier to access for humans. Siri or Google Assistant is another great example of advanced AI for today’s standards. They can detect and understand your voice and they can accept all kinds of commands.
So, how does all of this have an impact on the transportation and logistics industry? Well, many companies right now are looking for ways to integrate AI into their business plan. It could help with transporting, planning, and even managing personnel and operations. By automating these kinds of tasks, the number of human errors will be reduced by a huge margin, increasing a company’s efficiency.
Data analysis
These last couple of years, the need for data analysis has been growing and growing, unfortunately, the number of analytics have not starter proportionally growing. Being and becoming a data analytic is not easy, but it definitely pays off to be one.
With this kind of talent in the transportation industry, a company can analyze all of the data they accumulated from their daily operations. Once the data is analyzed, there will be all kinds of information about demands, pricing, shipping times, delivery accuracy, fuel consumption, the margin of error, etc. All of this information can then be processed and used to optimize a company’s operations to become much more efficient and cheaper.
Sustainable energy
Is there an industry out there that does not see a huge benefit from sustainable energy? When a company increases its sustainability, it effectively reduces its energy bills, increasing profits. Going for renewable energy, especially in the transportation industry will lead to much higher profits. The industry will also have a much smaller carbon footprint which is also a huge positive for both the people and the business. The government taxes for pollution will be much smaller too.
Fortunately for everyone, we have seen huge technological advancements in electronic vehicles from companies such as Tesla, Porsche, and Audi. This is why many companies in the transportation business have started investing in all-electric vehicles.
We hope to see a lot more technological trends in the oncoming years to improve the overall efficiency in the transportation and logistics industry.
