How would it affect your business if you could reduce your warehouse workforce expenditures by 50% or more, add 24 x 7 shifts that could potentially double your productivity and have visibility to troves of up to the minute data on every aspect of your material handling operation? Warehouse robotics systems can help you redefine your business, slashing expenditures, boosting production and enhancing profitability.

Types of Warehouse Robots

Although a few of warehouse robotics solutions have been available for decades, others are bleeding edge solutions that could possibly disrupt the distribution and warehousing industry as we know it. The main classifications of robotics system are:

Articulated Robotic Arms: Robotic arms with multiple joints can lift and move items in a warehouse. They're commonly used for receiving operations, such as relocating products from pallets to shelving, or in production settings, for picking and shipping.

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles: Unmanned aerial vehicles, conventionally know as drones, can deliver instantaneous inventory visibility in a facility by using RFID technology.

Automated Storage and Retrieval Systems (AS/RS) : AS/RS can retrieve inventory from racks and put items in their appropriate storage slots. Examples of AS/RS solutions are cranes that retrieve goods between aisles, vertical or horizontal carousel systems and shuttle systems.

Goods-to-Person technology (G2P): Instead of using people to pick items from bins and racks, G2P technology uses robots to deliver products to picking stations, where employees are positioned to fill orders as goods are delivered.

Automated Guided Vehicles (AGVs) : AGVs, such as self-driving pallet jacks, forklift or carts, transport goods between locations inside a warehouse. Cart based AGVs are often known as Automatic Guided Carts, or AGCs.

Autonomous Mobile Robots (AMRs) : Like AGVs and AGCs, Autonomous Mobile Robots can transport goods throughout a facility autonomously. Unlike AGCs and AGVs, which travel predetermined routes often controlled by magnetic strips or wire tracks, AMRs make use of cameras, maps and sensors to negotiate non-static routes by interpreting their surroundings.

Applications For Warehouse Robots

Until recently, robotic applications in warehouses were restricted to a small number of taks. As technology has advanced, robotic capabilities have flourished and they can now be applied to almost any requirement in a warehouse:

Loading and unloading: Although total automation of loading and unloading trailers is not yet a possibility, automated systems like AGVs and conveyors can be employed to enhance your loading dock operations.

Palletizing and de-palletizing: Robotic systems are perfect for monotonous, repetitive work like palletizing. Palletizizing robots typically make use of a special End-of-Arm Tool to pick up items and position them on a pallet. They're often used in combination with with conveyors that supply products to the palletizing area.

Sorting: Robotic sortation systems must have the ability to grab products, ID them and place them in an appropriate storage slot or bin. As goods move along a conveyor, these robots use cameras to identify specific items and select them.

Picking: A considerable portion of the human labor expenses in a warehouse are a result of order picking functions, and robotic picking solutions have been around for decades to help address this problem. However, modern robotic picking technologies offer increased speed, improved accuracy, more efficiency and superior value versus systems of just a few years ago.

Packaging: Robotic solutions are well suited for repetitious and monotonous jobs like packaging. They can also be used for more complicated tasks like weighing, dimensioning and cartonizing.

Transportation: Robotic transportation systems have wide-scale use in warehouses, from simple AGVs / AGCs to AS/RS integrated conveyors and AMRs.

Storage: AS/RS implementations incorporate several categories of warehouse robots, including cranes, pallet shuttles and mini-load systems. AS/RS is also sometimes used in conjunction with mobile racking systems to make the most of storage density.

Delivery: Leading e-commerce companies are experimenting with autonomous delivery drones, self-driving trucks and other emerging tech that will transform last mile delivery options in the coming years.

Replenishment: Leveraging RFID to keep track of inventory, warehouse drones can survey barcode labels in half the time of manual scanning and send inventory data back to the WMS instantaneously.

Industrial Robotics Companies Near Me

If would would like to learn more about industrial robotic solutions for your business, call an automation expert at Raymond West today!

Raymond West's Tucson facility serves Pima County, including Tucson, South Tucson, Marana, Oro Valley, Sahuarita and surrounding areas

Raymond West | Tucson Material Handling Equipment Supplier

Tucson Service Area
(520) 729-4222