The decreasing birthrate and aging population is bringing about rapid social changes all
over Japan. Also in the logistics industry, the resulting labor shortage is a major issue. Since the
third industrial revolution centered on computers, automation technologies have been progressing
day by day. However, automation remains at the level of partial automation of manual operations.
Although automation plays a certain role as a method to improve efficiency, it has not advanced to
a level where the labor shortage can be alleviated. Equipment that operates automatically have
progressed and developed significantly, but there remains the major challenge of commercializing
the equipment as a system. Automation that is conscious of coexistence with human beings has
been accepted by society, but unmanned operations in which no humans intervene have yet to be
accepted. This paper presents the logistics solutions of Mitsubishi Nichiyu Forklift, which has
started to transform from a logistics equipment manufacturer (seller of items) to a logistics system
integrator (seller of systems) in response to the demands of society. We believe that logistics
solutions comprehend the transfer of items totally from temporal, spatial and physical perspectives
and comprehensively realize the improvement of the efficiency and labor saving, energy saving,
space saving, time saving, etc., of all processes through the use of various information. Although
logistics solutions generally are the establishment of optimum individual land/sea/air
transportation (lines) and in-warehouse/plant logistics (points) that are connected organically to
realize the optimum overall logistics system, we expand logistics solutions specialized for
in-warehouse/plant logistics from the outset.
