Toyota Jumps On The Material Handling Bandwagon

Please enjoy the thoughts and musings of our friend, supporter, and long-time contributor Art van Bodegraven Jr., who passed away on June 18, 2017. Art was a prolific writer and had amassed a collection of unpublished blog posts he had planned to run well into the future. To honor his memory, we will continue to post these remaining blogs as he had intended. If you’ve been a fan of The Art of Art blog, check out our tribute.

 

In hot industry news, the renowned Dutch material handling company, Vanderlande, was acquired by Toyota.  Vanderlande, a billion dollar corporation, is over 65 years old, and its material handling offerings include software.

Toyota picked up Bastian a couple of months ago.  Its systems integrator role included a position as Toyota's largest forklift provider.  Its goal is to be - not become, but be - the world's largest material handling provider.

Global visions predominate.  While traditional providers promote forklifts, Honeywell has acquired Intelligrated, and KION Group claimed Dematic.  

There is an over-riding thematic vision, though.  As a handful of enterprises stake a claim in a new world, brick-and-mortar players are determined to out-Amazon Amazon, with digitalization and omni-channel dreams, with returns and shipping costs eating into Jeff Bezos' universe.  And a select few global players are in the game . . .

Good luck with that, wanna-be's