As economies grow and societies experience increase in demand for faster order fulfillments and accuracy in supply chain processes, there is an increasing pressure on manufacturers and supply chain management providers to come up with a way to meet consumer demands. While the demand for such orders should automatically translate to increase in workforce productivity, the transition has been anything but smooth. With the increasing costs in labour, players across the the retail logistics industry have found it hard to meet the demand.

Luckily, thanks to the advent of robotics and autonomy, some innovations have taken over the drudgery involved in logistics and supplemented the efforts of the human labour force. Also, the future in the logistics industry looks quite promising with a lot more innovations on the way that can fundamentally change the way the industry operates by bringing in efficiency and high technology.

Let’s see a few use cases where robotics have changed or can change the way logistics industry operates.

Use Case #1: Warehouse management using robots

If you are looking at the above image and are wondering what is, here’s some interesting tidbit for you. The above image is of Amazon’s Kiva robots. Kiva robots, a product of Amazon Robotics, is a revolution in the logistics and warehousing industry. Ever since introduction at Amazon’s logistics and warehousing facilities, Kiva has transformed the way products are hand-picked and shipped from the storage. It is an autonomous heavy duty robot which lifts crates of products and brings it directly to the hands of the packaging personnel who then ship the product to the consumer. This is a revolutionary technology that has changed the world of warehouse management. 

Use Case #2: Automation of Order picking

Order picking operation is a major process in logistic warehouses. Involving the activities of taking and collecting articles in a specified quantity before shipment, it has an important influence on supply chain's productivity. This process, which has been manual until now has seen some robotic entrants who could potentially disrupt the process. Amazon, which kicked off its inaugural Picking Challenge last year, has encouraged teams around the world to create robots able to perform the task of an Amazon stock picker. This year the competition was expanded to include not only picking items from a shelf and placing them in a container, but the reverse as well – and a team from the Netherlands has claimed victories in both.

Use Case #3: Last-Mile Delivery

With the advent of the online retail giants, we as consumers have been exposed to the luxury of “Doorstep Delivery”. While it is a sweet deal for the consumers, for the service provider several pain-points exist- the most important being physical fatigue of the delivery boys. Interestingly, Mercedes Benz has had an interesting take on this problem. It has teamed up with drone company Matternet to create a concept vehicle dubbed the Vision Van which would deploy drones from its rooftop to carry packages over the final leg of their journey.

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These are just a few ways where robotics have the potential to eliminate the human element. This would usher in the era where consumer satisfaction and lean processes rule the roost and make processes efficient on count of being automated.

Happy Roboting ! !