BY BEN AMES, SENIOR NEWS EDITOR
ROBOTICS AND AUTOMATION
Technology
WHEN THE DISCOUNT ONLINE RETAILER HOLLAR
announced in December that it was migrating its warehouse from California to Ohio in a bid to trim shipping
and logistics costs, observers may have thought the move
would hobble the firm’s operations during the critical peak
holiday shopping season.
However, on Jan. 7, Hollar announced that its fulfillment
operations were already up and running at the new location, giving credit to its fleet of 80 mobile robots from inVia
Robotics. Even while Hollar managers were still recruiting
new warehouse staff, their new DC was operational and
busy shipping orders of everything from toys and electronics to home, beauty, and apparel items, the company said.
The inVia Picker bots used in Hollar’s fulfillment center
streamline operations by enabling a goods-to-person work-
flow, operating alongside the facility’s human workers to
pick and move items, automating the fulfillment process,
the company says. InVia’s system uses autonomous mobile
robots (AMRs) that can navigate through DCs, pick boxes
off shelves, and transport them to new locations. Together,
the fleet’s bots function as a kind of rolling automated
storage and retrieval system (AS/RS), freeing up human
workers to perform complex tasks like piece picking and
quality control instead of walking long distances through
cavernous DCs.
By lightening the load on their human co-workers, “col-
laborative robots,” or cobots, can bring about enormous
efficiency gains, manufacturers say. For instance, Hollar
reports that its initial deployment of inVia robots at its
California warehouse last year boosted productivity 300
percent.
So does this mean that warehouses have relegated human
workers to replacing robots’ spent batteries and squeaky
wheels, or that they’ve even dispensed with humans alto-
gether?
Not at all, the experts say. While the new technology,
whether it’s an AMR, a cobot, or an automated guided
vehicle (AGV), may be providing warehouse workers with
a valuable assist in certain tasks, fulfillment centers will
continue to employ large staffs of human labor for the
foreseeable future, doing roughly the same work they’re
doing today.
Robots that can
go the distance
(and carry that
weight)
As more robots enter the warehouse work force,
they’re easing the physical demands on human
workers while taking productivity to new levels.
