Robots in the warehouse: small but fine
Ever since minister Lodewijk Asscher coined the word, the logistics sector has also been full of the term robotisation. The standard example cited again and again is Amazon, the online department store that acquired robot manufacturer Kiva. The robots in Amazon's distribution centres bring racks of picking stock to the order pickers, eliminating the need for them to walk and search for items.
The question is what robotisation in logistics will look like. Will we soon have warehouses that function as a big black box, from which the right box or pallet comes out at the push of a button, like a soda machine? Personally, I believe more in the small, flexible and dynamic robots like those from Kiva, although I keep wondering how smart it really is to supply an entire rack from which an order picker might only need one item.
Small, smart robots
As well as Kiva’s robots, the market now features many examples of small, smart robots. Think of the shuttles that are rapidly replacing miniloads in warehouses. In Wehkamp’s new distribution centre, there will soon be nearly five hundred of them in operation. They do not bring an entire rack to the order picker, but simply retrieve a bin containing the required items from the rack. The AutoStore robots do the same: they move across a cube-shaped grid and hoist the required bins of items from that grid.
In Germany, at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, work is under way on compact robots with a roller track that can move freely across the warehouse floor. The special thing is that these robots can work together. On their own, they are capable of transporting a bin or box, but the four of them can move an entire pallet from A to B. And if the flow of bins between two points is too great, together they can form a conveyor that dissolves into nothingness as soon as the supply dries up again.
Drones in the warehouse
And who says robots necessarily have to drive on the floor or on rails in racks? Previously appeared on LogistiekProfsA post that the Fraunhofer Institut is working on drones that can inventory warehouse stock. Dutch company Qimarox announced some time ago that it was investigating whether drones could be used to stack boxes on pallets. It looks like a good marketing stunt, but is it really? This possibility is indeed being seriously considered.
The advantage of all these examples is that they are flexible and scalable applications. If more capacity is temporarily needed, a few robots can easily be hired in. Not needed for a while? Then they do not take up valuable space like many existing material handling systems do. And do the activities or the product range change? Then there are no rigid systems standing in the way of setting up new efficient processes. So robots are bound to come, as long as they are small and fine.
Also read: The warehouse worker versus the robot: who wins?
Marcel te Lindert
