FEATURE Automated warehousing
ROBOTICS - FROM ZERO TO HERO
Alfred Chen, founder and CEO of Rainbow Dynamics, explains the benefits of robot based intralogistics solutions for grocery retailers
F
ar too many of the warehouses and cold stores that process fresh produce for the UK’s grocery retail sector remain over-reliant on old fashioned manual handling processes because the alternative has always been limited to systems based on conveyor technology that require a vast amount of building space to operate in. But, with the emergence of autonomous mobile robots, grocery fresh produce storage and intralogistics processes. Total grocery retail sales in the UK are forecast to hit £241.3 billion by 2028. And, as the leading players in this hyper-competitive sector gear up their stores and the industry faces some complex challenges. go away, while changes in consumer behaviour including growing demand for healthy and sustainably-sourced fresh products at the lowest prices, and a preference for buying fewer items but visiting stores more frequently, mean that product availability and price are more vital than ever to a grocery retailer’s success. The introduction of greater levels of automation
and robotics within fresh grocery products warehouses and distribution centres is, arguably, long overdue: a surprisingly high number of the processes that are fundamental to the smooth running of every fresh produce warehouse or distribution centre are performed manually. technology and autonomous robot-based solutions space available.
Most – if not all – fresh goods distribution centres incoming pallet loads onto a ‘target’ pallet or a roll cage which is then loaded onto a delivery vehicle and shipped to a retail store. that all fresh goods arriving at the DC must leave the facility the same day – nothing is stored overnight. and a considerable amount of manual handling. But reduce the level of human intervention required for
automationmagazine.co.uk Automated Warehousing
Automated rehousing
cut the amount of manual handling required and, For example, at a typical UK Regional distribution Centre where, for instance, 50,000 technology it is possible to reassign as many as 50 business. Modern robotic sortation systems require than old-style solutions that had cross belt conveyors at their heart. collation process have always had to be weighed against the cost of the extra warehouse space that will be needed to accommodate cross belt sortation conveyor technology. However, with mobile robot technology a system that delivers greatly improved labour a storage building’s existing footprint is now possible. An order building system based on circa 100 and will move some 3000 units per hour. That is in most cases, exceed the typical daily throughput of a regional distribution centre serving the grocery sector. Within ambient stores the cost of the extra
space required to accommodate a cross belt sorter
CONTACT:
Rainbow Dynamics
www.rainbow-dynamics.com
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Automation | September 2024 39
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