Music aficionados have long celebrated the collaborative rendition of “Walk This Way” featuring rock band Aerosmith and hip-hop group Run DMC for its amalgamation of two distinct genres. As automation becomes a bigger factor in warehouses, facility managers are hoping to achieve their own epic collaboration.

“Many industry experts will say the future of manufacturing is automation,” says Erica Moyer, product manager for pallet truck and stacker line for The Raymond Corp., Greene, N.Y. “The greatest opportunity for the material handling industry is the introduction of collaborative automation and operator assist technologies. Introducing automation into various processes creates preparation and programming tasks that a human will always have to handle. Ultimately, collaborative automation reallocates labor to more value-added tasks with greater flexibility and for a lower total cost of ownership.”