By 2025, at least 50,000 distribution centres worldwide will employ robots. That's an exponential growth from the 4,000 distribution centres currently using robots.
Market researcher ABI Research thus predicts growth of as much as 1,200 per cent. In the US alone, some 23,000 companies will use logistics robots by 2025, up from 2,500 companies in 2018.
E-commerce is seen as the biggest driver of that growth. In online retail, next-day delivery is labelled as the standard, which means for logistics providers that they have to set up their distribution centres very efficiently. Advanced robotics is ideally suited to meet those needs, says ABI Research.
Smaller robots can easily be deployed to cope with seasonal peaks in orders. "Robots enable warehouses to scale up or down their operations as needed, while delivering efficiency gains and mitigating staffing and labour challenges," said Nick Finill, senior analyst at ABI. "For retailers, finding enough staff for the peak season is a challenge every year."
The research firm does not expect robots to replace workers in the near future. Robotic systems will mainly be used to make workers more productive or to replace older systems.
