DC Velocity - August 2016

34 DC VELOCITY AUGUST 2016 www.dcvelocity.com
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able work, some are also aware of societal friction as robots assume functions once reserved for the human worker. According to Christensen, companies need to follow a multistep checklist when integrating humans and robots in the same environment. At the core, he said, is to build trust between human workers and their automated colleagues. This includes involving employees in training and automation, bringing the product into the facility before it is deployed so workers can see how it operates and the value it delivers, publishing quantifiable results of a robot’s functions and how it benefits the business, and ensuring employees have complete visibility into the machines’ movements so they can coordinate schedules, among other objectives, he said.

Given the trends in fulfillment, robots are only going to
proliferate in the DC. As customers order more products
online and demand faster deliveries, filling those orders will
place more stress on supply chains.
At the same time, about 90 percent
of material handling relies on manual
labor, and people can’t work expo-
nentially faster. Rising labor costs and
a shrinking labor pool, especially as
the work force ages, only add to the
challenges and the need for automat-
ed solutions such as cobots to meet
them.

The good news for humans is that robotics innovation is putting a new generation of collaborative machines, and the technology they possess, in the hands of people who can discover new and stimulating skills in training them. The mission for those on the vanguard of this change is to persuade their fellow humans that the outcome of the human-robot mating dance will be a good one. As the 2016 MHI

report states, “While it is clear that robotics and automation will have a significant impact on supply chains within the next decade, their adoption will hinge as much on public perception as [on] the savings they create.”