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Collaborative robots in the e-commerce supply chain

E-commerce is changing the face of the typical warehouse, making cobots a more viable picking solution.

2019 WERC Annual Conference
2019 WERC Annual Conference

Traditional warehouses require the movement of large pallets by forklift (with relatively few employees). An e-commerce warehouse, on the other hand, may involve hundreds or thousands of SKUs and many employees picking products to fulfill small orders in the shortest amount of time possible.

Adrian Kumar, Vice President of Solutions Design with DHL Supply Chain, discussed the emerging role of collaborative robots and warehouse picking strategies at the 2019 WERC Annual Conference today in Columbus, OH.

Kumar said a traditional manual warehouse cart solution usually involves pushing a cart through the warehouse aisles, using a pick-assist device such as a wearable RF Gun to pick multiple orders at once, and then sorting the corresponding order at a later time in a pack-out area. This solution has low capital cost and is flexible, but relies on the productivity of the picker and their skill with the device, as well as the possibility of a long cycle time to complete.

Due to market changes such as the exponential growth of e-commerce; customers who have increased expectations for the speed of fulfillment; and a shortage of skilled workers combined with an aging society, automation has become more appealing - even to smaller operations. And as barriers such as price, flexible solutions and the capabilities of robots improve, more warehouses are considering robotic picking as a solution.

A simple robotic picking strategy is a cart solution – either with “follow-me” or “lead-me” carts. Follow-me carts follow the picker as they work, while lead-me carts remove the pick-assist device from the operation by leading the picker with navigational guidance and pick-task information. Both of these types of robots then travel automatically to the pack-out area.

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