Pallet Automation Growth: DCS’ Justin Willbanks Contributes to New STIQ Report

STIQ Ltd’s recently released its Pallet Automation 2026 market report. The publication draws on more than 40 interviews with system integrators, original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), racking suppliers, and consultants. Contributors represent expertise from across the global pallet automation market, including with equipment such as automated storage and retrieval systems (AS/RS) such as stacker cranes and pallet shuttles.

Justin Willbanks, Principal of Solutions at DCS (pictured at right), was among the participants providing commentary. Willbanks offered perspective on the rise of 2D (four-way) pallet shuttles, where stacker cranes still fit, how DCS vets shuttle partners, and why pallet quality matters.

2D Pallet Shuttles Are Driving Pallet Automation Growth

STIQ’s report finds that 2D pallet shuttles have opened up new space in pallet automation. The technology is increasingly winning projects that once defaulted to stacker cranes. Willbanks confirmed that customer interest has accelerated sharply.

“2D pallet shuttles have been around for a few years, but they definitely are increasing in popularity pretty, pretty rapidly in the last year or two, for sure,” he said.

He also pointed to the flexibility that sets the technology apart from traditional crane solutions. Crane-based AS/RS, said Willbanks, is primarily storage-focused.

“The flexibility of the 2D shuttle… we have a lift that connects us to 100% of the inventory. You’ve just got a lot more options in how you could potentially design a solution,” he explained. “We’ll continue to look for unique ways to use these solutions in the coming years.”

Pallet Automation for Brownfield Facilities

On where 2D shuttles fit best, Willbanks pointed to existing buildings with irregular footprints. In these situations, a crane’s straight-aisle requirement can work against the layout.

“2D shuttles are more favorable for brownfields where you don’t have to have a straight line. A crane solution, if you need five aisles and your building is misshapen and you need one aisle that’s shorter than the other, it doesn’t necessarily make sense,” he explained. “I liken it to almost like a grid-based goods to person, where you can have any kind of shape really you want, and the 2D shuttles can go wherever they need to.”

He added that system redundancy weighs on customers as well.

“I think the crane can still make sense. But I don’t know that I’ve experienced a situation where I’m strongly considering a crane in this day and age,” he said. “If the crane goes down, then you’re stuck until it gets up and running… As we move into the future, I would envision cranes kind of falling out of favor and being replaced with the 2D shuttles.”

Reference Sites Separate Vendors

With a growing field of 2D shuttle vendors on the market, STIQ’s report notes that evaluating pallet automation partners has become harder for integrators. Willbanks said the hardware itself rarely sets one vendor apart.

“The 2D technology is important, but we haven’t seen truly any kind of groundbreaking differences from one shuttle to the next,” he noted. “A lot of it is really the experience with a rack supported application, for example.”

That is why DCS puts weight on site visits before committing to a partner.

“Initially we had 4-5 different options we would look at. As we started doing our research and going to sites, we quickly realized, okay, you haven’t done quite as much as you say you have done,” Willbanks explained. “We’ve truly learned who’s got the most experience and who can really be trusted to do a large scale project. At the moment, there’s two vetted partners that we work with.”

He added that DCS remains open to more.

“I’m confident there’s probably 3-4 more that have successful live sites…,” continued Willbanks. “We’re definitely open to evaluating more than just the people we’re working with currently.”

Shuttle-Racking Experience Matters More Than Single Sourcing

Racking often accounts for 50–70% of a 2D shuttle project, according to STIQ. Therefore, the relationship between the shuttle vendor and the racking supplier is critical. Willbanks said a vendor that also manufactures racking is not automatically the better choice.

“I don’t see being part of a rack manufacturer as particularly positive. The way I treat that is, essentially, it’s two separate entities,” he said. “The relationship between a 2D shuttle vendor and the racking vendor would be the advantage. Not from a price perspective, but the fact that they’ve worked multiple projects together… The more familiar you are with that, it just causes less issues or potential for issues down the road.”

Letting the Shuttle Software Do Its Job

Willbanks also described how DCS divides software responsibilities with its shuttle partners. DCS prefers to keep order logic at the integrator level while the shuttle vendor manages storage.

“We don’t want to try to figure out how to optimize a 2D shuttle, that’s not our expertise. We want the vendor partner to manage that. How to group orders and bring product out would be in our wheelhouse,” he explained. “But in terms of how it’s being stored, and where it’s being selected, we let the shuttle system provide all that information and handle that.”

Pallet Consistency Protects Future Flexibility

STIQ’s report identifies pallet quality as the most common cause of pallet automation system failures. Willbanks noted that design can accommodate some dimensional variance. However, extreme variance limits a system’s long-term value.

“If you can provide dimensions with a certain amount of variance, within reason, you can design the rails of your storage and there’s a little bit of flexibility. But if you’ve got drastic variances, it’ll probably get too rigid,” he said. “You can still do it and have certain lanes be dedicated to specific pallet types. But I think that would not be a great application because you’re just boxing yourself in and not really allowing yourself any flexibility for the future.”

Quotes and data referenced from STIQ Ltd’s Pallet Automation 2026 report.
Source: STIQ Ltd, Pallet Automation 2026 Market Report.