innovation Archives

Google’s Logistics Partner of the Year Announced

Posted on 18 April, 2025 by Will Priestman

Manhattan Associates Inc has received the 2025 Google Cloud Partner of the Year Award for Supply Chain and Logistics. This prestigious award highlights Manhattan’s role as an innovator within the Google Cloud ecosystem, its commitment to driving customer success, and its pioneering application of Agentic AI and Generative AI (GenAI) within the Manhattan Active® Suite over the past year.

“Google Cloud’s Partner Awards recognize partners who have created outsized value for customers through the delivery of innovative solutions and a high level of expertise,” said Kevin Ichhpurani, President, Global Partner Ecosystem, Google Cloud. “We’re proud to announce Manhattan Associates as a 2025 Google Cloud Partner Award winner and celebrate their impact enabling customer success over the past year.”

“We are honored to be recognized as Google Cloud’s 2025 Business Applications Partner of the Year Award for Supply Chain and Logistics,” said Sanjeev Siotia, executive vice president and CTO, Manhattan Associates. “This award is a testament to the deep collaboration between Manhattan and Google Cloud, as we work together to bring cutting-edge cloud infrastructure, data analytics, Agentic AI and GenAI capabilities to our joint customers. We look forward to continuing this partnership and driving the future of resilient, AI-driven supply chains and omnichannel commerce.”

At the core of Manhattan’s AI-powered innovations is Manhattan Active® Assist; an intelligent, contextual GenAI assistant designed to transform how users interact with the Manhattan Active solutions. Included with all Manhattan Active subscriptions, Manhattan Assist provides a natural language summary of how applications are currently configured and gives instant, accurate responses to questions about product functionality, API structures and more, across multiple personas, roles, and functions.

Manhattan Active® Maven is the company’s Agentic AI offering – an AI powered agent infused with order, payment, store location, and product availability information to deliver personalized, contextual customer service, akin to those delivered by human agents. Built on an Agentic AI platform and Google Gemini models, Manhattan Active Maven is easy to implement and embeds seamlessly with websites and mobile applications, deflecting customer service inquiries, while boosting customer satisfaction and loyalty.

“Manhattan Active Assist and Manhattan Active Maven showcase the real-world power of AI in supply chain and logistics, driving unprecedented levels of personalization, productivity, and cost-savings. Manhattan’s continued partnership with Google Cloud enables us to deliver scalable, resilient and innovative solutions that address the complex challenges of modern supply chain networks,” Siotia finished.

Recently, Manhattan and Google Cloud collaborated on the second edition of the Unified Commerce Benchmark—the industry’s only analysis of unified commerce in specialty retail based on real-world purchases, returns, and customer interactions across digital and physical channels. The 2025 edition revealed the common attributes of the most successful retailers, tangible retail best practices, and key opportunities to enhance customer value through modernized operations.

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BIFA Freight Service Awards Winners Revealed

17 Innovations in IFOY Final

Posted on 22 January, 202429 July, 2025 by David Priestman

The IFOY organization has announced the nominations for the IFOY AWARD 2024 and once again made a hard selection. From a field of 35 companies entering, 15 intralogistics providers from six countries qualified for the final with a total of 17 devices and solutions, including four start-ups.

The intralogistics specialists AGILOX, Crown, GLOBE Fuel Cell Systems, HWArobotics, Innok Robotics, Jungheinrich, MEYSENS, RAVAS, SAFELOG, SSI SCHÄFER and STILL can win one of the internationally coveted trophies.

BOX ID Systems, Brightpick, CIP Mobility and CYBRID are in the final of the “IFOY Start-up of the Year” spin-off award.

“The nomination round was exceptionally tough. More than half of the applicants did not make it to the final round,” says Anita Würmser, Chairperson of the IFOY jury. “All the more clearly, the finalists reflect the megatrends of our time. Starting with increasingly sophisticated warehouse technology and extending to the meanwhile impressive range of applications of mobile robotics and AI through to highly innovative components and increasingly complex customer projects. Efficiency, scalability, and future readiness are in demand and the IFOY Audit will show who has the edge.”

Würmser expects a tough debate in the jury, which includes Logistics Business Editor Peter MacLeod, sessions to decide the six winning trophies, which will be awarded in June in Baden near Vienna in Lower Austria.

Sustainable Innovation

Posted on 8 December, 2020 by Keith McKinley

Bonfiglioli is encouraged by its future opportunities, boosted by a new Bologna production plant and a new frequency inverter series. Paul Hamblin reports.

“Innovation becomes sustainability,” said Fausto Carboni, CEO of Italian gear motor and drive manufacturer Bonfiglioli at a September press conference. He painted a bullish picture of the
company’s recent performance, with revenues up 6.7% at €973 million last year, incorporating EMEA figures up 5% and North America up 20%.

Looking at the much more volatile recent months, he is encouraged by the contrast between April and August numbers this year. He quoted the example of India, down 99% year-on-year in April, for obvious reasons, but up 10% year-on-year in August. In an intriguing signal for the wider economy, he revealed that China will be Bonfiglioli’s most important market in 2020, with numbers boosted by 64% year-on-year in the territory. While Italy, France and Spain are all understandably down by over a half this year, Germany is a predictable outlier, with a less damaging slowdown than its European neighbours. Mr Carboni suggested that Germany’s growth is also boosted by its strong progress with the Circular Economy.

He went on to outline how Bonfiglioli has adapted to virus restrictions with new shift patterns, improved distancing, common space procedures and regular temperature checks of staff. These
have been incorporated at its new plant for industrial gear motors at Bologna. “#WeNeverStop is our new mantra,” he revealed. This promise is illustrated by the launch of a new premium frequency inverter series.

Bonfiglioli says that the new AxiaVert Series provides the ultimate combination of flexibility, modularity and connectivity, aimed at offering an optimal response to specific industrial application requirements across a wide range of sectors and with different degrees of complexity. AxiaVert is now available in 4 sizes, with a power range between 0.25–15 kW. Higher power versions will be released at a later stage.

The advanced digital and open communication protocols, complying with automation and Industry 4.0 standards, allow a smooth integration into automation networks, thanks to the compatibility
with a great variety of fieldbus protocols and machine controllers. Communication encryption is embedded by design in AxiaVert to ensure secure communication. In addition, thanks to
condition monitoring functions on the key inverter components as well as on the gearmotor critical parameters, AxiaVert is able to provide real time diagnostics, energy optimization and
predictive maintenance information related to the motion system up to the entire machine.

The wide range of advanced integrated functional safety functions, in compliance with EN ISO 13849-1 and IEC 61508 international standards, are available in different versions, to select the most suitable option in terms of costs and performance and match the actual needs. This approach simplifies configuration and reduces the need for external safety components, while ensuring a safe and controlled operation of different movements (e.g. lifting applications), thanks to Safe Brake Control and fast spindle axes with Safe Limited Speed, even sensorless.

Thanks to its modular structure and PLC software programmability, the system can be flexibly adapted and customized to meet many different application requirements, by defining the proper
software parameters and functions, and selecting the most suitable hardware modules, such as communication or encoder modules, variants and accessories. In addition, the AxiaVert Series offers a great variety of frame and power sizes, mounting variants and cooling concepts for greater freedom of design.

Great process versatility is ensured by the high compatibility with a wide range of motors (asynchronous, synchronous, synchronous reluctance) and by its high speed, position and torque control
accuracy, both for open and closed loop applications. Finally, user-friendliness is ensured by AxiaManager engineering software for programming, commissioning, operation and monitoring of AxiaVert. AxiaManager is available as a Windows PC GUI and as a mobile App for an instant access to the drive status and configuration with a simplified user interface.

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