handling conveyors & automated handling l
When you think about robots, it’s natural to think of metallic science-fiction creatures, the Disney character WALL-E or even the popular 1980s dance style. Most would never associate robotics with warehouse automation. However, says Peter Blair, senior director of marketing for Kiva Systems, these two things do, in fact, have a very unique relationship.
Active robots F
irst, let’s take a step inside a traditional warehouse, or distribution centre (DC), to explore some of the fundamental activities that take place under its roof: picking, packing and shipping orders. A typical DC has thousands of square feet of concrete flooring with endless aisles of inventory. Products are stored on static shelves waiting to be picked for retail store restocking or internet order fulfilment. Many DC operations use a manual process for materials handling where workers walk up to 14 miles per day, hunting through isles of inventory shelving, gathering
merchandise into their carts. Other warehouses automate this process using conveyors, sorters or carousel systems to increase worker productivity. This form of automation can involve miles of bolted-down fixtures and equipment that snakes through the facility forcing a static workflow.
The manual process is slow, inaccurate, and expensive, requiring many workers; while the conveyors, sorters and carousel systems require complicated installations, are inflexible to modifications in product shape and size, and are vulnerable to single points-of-failure. Furthermore, changes
to permanent fixtures – like reconfiguring a conveyer system to accommodate a new workflow or expanding the size of the available storage – typically require significant disruption to ongoing operations. However, a growing trend is taking shape in distribution centres around the world, allowing them to perform smarter, faster and with greater flexibility to meet today’s more sophisticated multi-channel supply chain challenges. This trend is the use of mobile-robotics for warehouse automation.
Companies like Walgreens, Staples, Office Depot, The Gap, Saks 5th
32 ShD February 2012
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