In-person trade shows are back!
MODEX 2022 took place last week at the World Congress Center in Atlanta, GA and reunited the material handling industry in-person for the first time in over two years. MHI reported a record-setting event, with over 37,000 enthusiastic attendees seeking the latest supply chain innovations and over 857 exhibitors ready to make their solutions seen on material handling’s biggest stage. This is reportedly 20% more visitors than the last pre-pandemic MODEX in 2018!
Duane Glass, President of Carter Intralogistics and veteran MODEX attendee, had this to say on the record-breaking event, “I’ve attended many of these shows over the years, and I have to say the mood on the show floor last week felt especially electric. You could really tell how excited people were to be back face-to-face, reconnecting with clients or friends from around the industry. It was good to see the industry come together again.”
There is so much to cover on a content level regarding the educational seminars and press announcements made at the show. For an overview of what took place last week, MHI’s recap videos are great ways for attendees and non-attendees alike to see what they missed because let’s be honest, there’s simply too much to do it all during the event. For a quick and light-hearted look at MODEX 2022, Airline Hydraulics’ Automation Product Manager, Graham Zimmerman, put out a fantastic 90 second montage of the show’s most eye-catching displays.
New name, new booth, same great material handling solutions.
Carter has been a perennial MODEX attendee for over 10 years, but this show was special for several reasons. First, it is the first in-person trade show under our new brand, Carter Intralogistics. It felt great to have our name and brand truly align with the direction our company is headed. Second, this is the largest booth space Carter has ever procured at any trade show. This allowed our marketing and engineering teams to “go wild” and design an impressive and stand-out booth display that a) attracted more attention than in years past and b) allowed us to showcase more of our capabilities.
Kirstie Lassanske, Carter’s Director of Marketing, and the brain behind the booth commented, “This year’s booth was a big step up for us from MODEX 2020 and the team did a great job bringing it all together and putting on an amazing show. With more space available to us, we were able to not only fit a Robotics loop showcasing our mixed-case palletizing capabilities, spiral conveyors, and automated order fulfillment solutions that were such big hits at MODEX 2020, but also a completely new Conveyance loop. This loop was especially exciting to unveil as it was the public’s first look at our new parcel conveyor, as well as the first time we’ve brought CarterFlex™ and CarterMobile™ to the show floor.”
Mixed-case Palletizing and CarterFlex™ steal the show.
Carter’s booth was packed with equipment from all our major material handling pillars— conveyance technologies, robotics solutions, and order fulfillment systems — but two stole the show: Mixed-case Palletizing and our flexible and expandable MDR conveyor, CarterFlex™.
Our Mixed-case palletizing robotic solution leverages a proprietary software, STACKS™, to build safe and secure pallets out of items with different sizes and weights. STACKS™ scans and dimensions packages upstream, creates an ideal pallet with those packages using a dynamic algorithm, and leverages a conveyor loop buffer system to hold packages until it’s their turn to come down the final line where they are lifted and placed in the correct position on the pallet. This technology has been long sought after by retailers and distributors from across many industries, and it’s no wonder we had crowds gather daily to watch the robots at work.
Carter’s Director of Sales, Joel Thomas, had this to say about the mixed-case palletizing display, “It’s no surprise to see the mixed-case palletizing robotic cell and STACKS software getting so much attention at this year’s show. There is a huge need across a lot of industries right now for this technology and our booth display brought that solution straight to them. It’s incredible the range of companies that need mixed-case palletizing solutions. We talked to attendees from big box stores, food manufacturers, liquor distributors, shoe companies, you name it. They were all looking for mixed-case.”
The other piece of Carter equipment that really drew eyes at MODEX was CarterFlex™, an expandable, flexible, and mobile MDR conveyor solution (pictured below). Carter Flex™ is mounted on casters and built to flex and bend around a crowded warehouse floor. This allows companies to quickly adjust the conveyor shape as floorspace availability changes — making it the perfect solution for loading and unloading areas, distribution centers and portable assembly lines.
Thomas continued and spoke about Carterflex™, “based on market feedback and challenges customers face with flex conveyor, we have built a very robust system in CarterFlex™. The number of times someone would come up to the conveyor loop and say, ‘Wow, this flex looks heavy-duty’ was more than I could count. In my opinion, we have one of the best flex conveyors in the marketplace and we have some of the best lead times in the industry for this type of flexible, powered conveyor.”
See you at ProMat!
With MODEX 2022 being all wrapped up, the industry turns its attention to the next big trade show: ProMat 2023. Carter Intralogistics will be back again at this show with an even bigger booth than MODEX 2022. Stay tuned for updates on what’s going to be in our booth and where to find us on the show floor!
