SprintProject wanted to give the floor to supply chain professionals in order to find out a little more about their vision of autonomous vehicles and the consequences they consider for their professions.
In your opinion, how autonomous vehicles can change your jobs? Have you undertaken any reflection or actions in your company to prepare for its arrival?
Yannick BUISSON, Managing Director France and Western Europe – FM Logistic:
“Autonomous vehicles will definitely open up opportunities in logistics professions, both on the roads and inside warehouses.
For more than 3 years, FM Logistic has been using autonomous vehicles (AGV) which can move pallets to prepare loads, transfer pallets to supply copacking production areas, etc. We currently use around thirty AGVs and our deployment rate is around ten per year.
On the road, even if we are convinced of the transformation that autonomous vehicles will bring about, we have not yet launched an experiment. There are multiple applications: transfer of employees from parking lots to their workstations, movement of trailers for loading/unloading on site, delivery, etc. »
Yves Delmas, COO Europe / Executive VP – DPD Group:
“Regarding the usefulness of autonomous vehicles in our logistics professions, I am quite old fashioned on the question. From my point of view, autonomous vehicles will not change our businesses much. On the other hand, it can partly alleviate the difficulty of finding drivers. However, as long as a driver is needed to accompany a heavy goods vehicle to the highway, to bring the first driver back to the depot, to pick up the heavy goods vehicle at the entrance to towns or to bring it there… I remain skeptical .
Furthermore, we have no serious indication of cost at this time. In the case where the autonomous vehicle saves money - and this taking into consideration the great ballet of drivers mentioned previously - this still seems complicated to me with the exception of long distances because our customers are well informed and will pass on the reduction costs in prices.
Concerning platooning (several trucks following one another), in my opinion it is very theoretical. It is rare for several vehicles to follow each other on the same axis and when this is the case, the interest is precisely to optimize the arrival and departure sorting in order to smooth the injections and optimize machine time. In fact, having them leave and arrive at the same time is logistical heresy.
In my opinion, for the interest of the autonomous vehicle to be real, the final cost would have to be so much more attractive than the current one, that this would allow more direct deliveries, even if not fully fulfilled. This would then allow our HUB investments to be revised downwards. On the other hand, at the same time, we should perhaps have more platform doors in the depots.
Regarding delivery robots, I am not more positive. Indeed, this is the first innovation in our businesses that would be to the detriment of customer service. The idea is that the customer would receive a message when the robot – which had miraculously managed to enter the terminal intact and untouched – is near my house. The customer must then get off and reach the terminal. All this until the robots learn to ring the bell and take the elevator!
For example, 25% Vélibs are stolen or sabotaged…
The day when a robot will make 100 deliveries in Paris in total autonomy is not for tomorrow!"
Marc Vettard, General Director – STEF and Jean-Marc Platero, Technical Director – STEF:
“How can autonomous vehicles change our professions? In my opinion, the first development will be in our traction business. It will transform our profession first of all by making it more secure. An autonomous vehicle is a machine and a machine is always safer than a human being. This should also limit equipment damage and reduce our fuel consumption. The added value of a traction driver being low, we will have to ask ourselves the question of the future of this position. One question remains unanswered: if we imagine an autonomous 100% truck in the long term, do we still need to have a tractor and a semi-trailer? Won't they become a single vehicle?
For the distribution profession, it is still difficult to imagine how we will be impacted. Cities today are struggling to combat congestion and pollution. With current technologies, no ideal vehicle model has been found. A current trend (see in California) is to move towards delivery robots, from the very small to the largest. But this type of vehicle is having difficulty finding its place because local residents are reacting to this change and the model is not mature.
Has STEF started thinking or taking actions to prepare for the arrival of autonomous vehicles? The arrival of autonomous vehicles will be a real revolution. In a period of driver shortage, we will have to imagine what our drivers will be doing in 10 to 15 years. As for traction, once the technology is mature, we can imagine letting vehicles circulate alone between two cities, as for our deliveries in city centers, the driver could see his job evolve and move more towards a commercial approach (monitoring deliveries, placing orders.).
The real complexity will be managing the transitional period. Technology will not move towards fully autonomous all at once. There will be – as we experience today with private vehicles – different stages before reaching total autonomy. It will then be essential to help our drivers accept this development. On this point, it would seem that acceptance is more a psychological matter than a technical one. We will also need to help them prepare for the evolution of their profession. The real issue will be during this period. As an employer, we will need to: reassure, support and give perspective to our drivers and future drivers. Besides, will they always have to have the title of driver?
Whatever happens, we will have to maintain real proximity with our manufacturing partners so that they give us a vision and timing of the developments as soon as possible."
Frédéric Vallet, President – DB SCHENKER France:
“At DB Schenker, we are involved in autonomous vehicle tests which are currently taking place with our Swedish colleagues; due to the market segment in which we operate, palletized industrial freight, we believe that these solutions will not allow us to deliver to city centers, unless we maintain an accompanying employee who will be responsible for transporting the freight to the last meters, from the vehicle to the merchant. This last notion remains an avenue on which we are considering because it would make it possible to support the transformation of the driving profession towards a profile oriented towards the relationship with the end customer.
Our vision is also that the autonomous vehicle will make sense on connections connecting our agencies, mainly using major highways and national roads, and connecting one urban area to another urban area, from one industrial zone to another industrial zone. Generally carried out at night, the operational transformation of these links towards an autonomous solution would help to reduce the risk of accidents.
Finally, we perceive that autonomous vehicles will have a role in managing flows within our agencies themselves, linked to the movement of trailers from docks to waiting car parks and vice versa."
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