The US Federal Aviation Administration at the end of August put into effect regulations for operating low altitude drones.
The rules are similar to those already established in the UK in 2013. Drones can fly only during the day—unless you apply for and receive a variance from the FAA—up to an altitude of 400 feet at a speed of 100 miles per hour max, and always within visual contact of the operator.
The immediate implication for the supply chain is fuzzy. The drones allowed to fly now will not be robotically piloted or remotely piloted beyond a line of sight. So, the regulation is one step in the direction anticipated by retailers like Amazon and Walmart, companies that famously have been playing around with warehouse-to-customer drone delivery for some time now.
So, what is the drone endgame for the supply chain? Amazon and Google plan to use drones to deliver goods ordered online by 2017 but a lot more regulation will be necessary to bring about what they have in mind.
The new rules approve of flights for agriculture, research and development, education, utility and infrastructure inspections, rescue operations, aerial photography and wildlife evaluation. Operators must be at least 16, have a remote pilot certificate and report to the FAA on any drone incident that results in serious injuries or property damage.
Amazon has been continuously developing its Prime Air delivery for five years, yielding a number of varying drone designs. The concept by most accounts is to airlift products weighing five pounds or less from warehouse to customer in under 30 minutes, without a pilot (or truck driver, to put a fine point on it).
All this is rather academic, judging by the sheer number of commercial drones ready for takeoff in the US. The FAA reports there are currently more than 10,000 commercial drones registered for use, and industry analysts believe that number will skyrocket to 2.7 million by 2020.
Drones appear to be one element of the supply chain evolution, which includes warehouse robotics and automation, driverless delivery trucks, and other technologies and systems that increase efficiency and shorten the supply chain.
The bottom line is that drones are still part of a “world of tomorrow” that distracts from the fact that technology, automation and eCommerce have been adding efficiencies and lower costs all along.
As one writer puts it, “There is a tendency to think that complex supply chains and the multifaceted processes needed to manage numerous suppliers, manufacturers, wide-ranging logistics networks and corporate buyers require disparate multi-layered levels of organization…. A range of innovations, from cloud technology to backend integration have meant that information and orders can be seamlessly transferred from buyer to supplier, with much less time spent on manual order entry processes.”
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