Montapacking invests in cobots. In thefulfilment specialist 's nine warehouses, robots and employees willoperate side by side. 'Fulfilment 4.0', says Montapacking itself about the investment.
Lowpad
Montapacking, which handles fulfilment for around 450 online shops, engaged Eurotec to design a cobot that works well with humans. The two parties are currently working on commissioning this system. The cobot is an automatic guided vehicle (AGV) with a low height of 12 centimetres, called 'Lowpad®' by its creator. The Lowpad can navigate and avoid obstacles completely autonomously and without infrastructure in the floor.
Dynamic warehouse layout
The racks of products will be taken to the packing stations by Lowpads. However, the locations in the warehouse are dynamic. As the Montapacking Innovation Centre developed self-learning software (AI), a dynamic layout of the fulfilment process in the warehouses is created.
Racks with slowmovers will be placed at the back of the warehouse without aisles, fastmovers will be placed at the front with extra-wide aisles, allowing the lowpads to pass each other. "This is of course dynamic again, at no time of the day are the aisles the same. Because sunscreen can sometimes change from a slowmover to a fastmover from one moment of the day to the next. This applies to a lot of products," says Edwin van der Ham, managing director of the company.
The way in which humans and robots work together is also dynamically designed. On peak days, racks with the fast movers of the moment are placed close to the packing department, allowing the orders in these racks to be handled quickly by humans. According to Montapacking, this is particularly useful during peak days: "Such as on Black Friday, when all cobots work overtime and, with the deployment of extra order pickers, everything can still leave before midnight. Fulfilment 4.0 can be applied to tweezers or razors, but also to rugs and mattresses."
Fulfilment 4.0
By Fulfilment 4.0, Van der Ham refers to the way robots and humans work together: in harmony and in a dynamic way. The current common way of working in the market is sometimes referred to as Fulfilment 1.0. This involves traditional warehouse operations with only human order pickers, who are smartly controlled.
Then there are systems that deploy robots, which store and stack all products in crates: Fulfilment 2.0. However, the crates all have a fixed size, so, for example, a cleaning cloth and a brush fit in them, but a broom does not. "This system lends itself very well to small products with a low turnover rate. But as a customer of a fulfilment company, I don't want to be stuck with the dimensions of a crate," van der Ham says.
One step further took Amazon, for example, with Fulfilment 3.0. In this, robots bring racks of products to the packing department. In this, the warehouses are completely sealed off from people. For Montapacking, however, having robots perform the entire picking process was not an option: "Investing in robots that can also handle the peak load of, for instance, Mother's Day or Black Friday, is financially impossible. That would increase rather than reduce costs," Van der Ham said.
Man continues to play major role in warehouse
The company, which acquired industry peer De Brink earlier this month, believes that process automation should always be accompanied by the use of humans in the order picking process. Thus, self-learning AI software determines how best to pick an order: exclusively by the Lowpad, entirely by an order picker or together. In each case, the optimal working method is chosen for the specific moment in the warehouse.
Montapacking is currently implementing the Lowpads. The fulfilment company stresses that it does not intend to cut staff. Last year, its workforce grew by 120 employees. Montapacking expects this growth to continue in the coming years. "It is particularly about flexibility and speed of work, which will only increase due to this new system," Montapacking concludes in a press release.
