![]() Typically, the phrase ‘robotic automation’ can evoke feelings of anxiety within a facility. Of course, any time businesses discuss the use of robots, there is always the question of how they will be received and used by the team. In fact, through the implementation of robotic picking technology, this women’s apparel brand realized a 100 percent increase in operational efficiency. In the fulfillment landscape, reducing a repetitious task by even 10 seconds can yield a significant increase in productivity. Because each LocusBot is responsible for delivering products from the employee to the packaging area, the distance each employee travels during a standard shift is also considerably reduced. With an autonomous and smart-picking solution, employees remain in specific zones while the robotic units travel between pick and put operations. ![]() Employees walked the entire pick path as directed by the Warehouse Management System (WMS), then guided the pushcart to the packaging area for staging. Prior to implementation, the pilot program used a conventional operation consisting of 20 employees and a considerable degree of manual labor, such as product handling, cart pushing and equipment operation. An intuitive user interface coupled with hands-free, pick-to-picture technology and a zone-based system provided a women’s apparel brand with the type of accuracy required by today’s customer. By implementing LocusBot units, GEODIS significantly increased precision picking within the facility. Increasing order accuracy is therefore critical, especially when considering the soft costs of customer satisfaction and lost sales. Nothing lowers profitability faster than mis-picks, mis-packs and general order errors. In GEODIS warehouses, each robot determined the most efficient route through the facility for optimal efficiency and order accuracy. These autonomous units delivered significant improvements in throughput and accuracy while eliminating wasted steps. With guidance from Locus Robotics, GEODIS elected to incorporate 21 LocusBots™ into the facility. GEODIS began the search for a safe, scalable and productive solution that was fairly easy to implement and required minimal training. Plagued with a dwindling labor market in the area, the facility needed to find an efficient and reliable supplement to traditional order picking. The beta program involved an inventory of approximately 30,000 unique SKUs spread over 66,000 square feet during an apparel retailer’s peak season. With these growing demands in mind, GEODIS recently completed a successful robotic picking pilot at its distribution facility in Indianapolis, Indiana. Furthermore, expedited delivery times continue to require efficiencies in the supply chain, driving operational executives to seek autonomous solutions for order fulfillment. Fueled by online shopping, shorter product life cycles and the ongoing influence of the Amazon effect, distribution centers are finding it increasingly difficult to handle large volumes of single-piece orders via traditional picking methods. In today’s fast-paced e-Commerce environment, many supply chain executives face a growing logistics challenge-meeting the demands of direct-to-consumer expectations. Robotic Order Picking Increases Supply Chain Productivity by 100%.
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