PERSPEC TIVE
OMNICHANNEL REQUIRES
A ROBOTIC SOLUTION

When it comes to their omnichannel fulfill- ment capabilities, DCs blow their retail store counterparts away. That much was clear
from the recent study on omnichannel distribution
conducted by ARC Advisory Group and DC VELOCITY. But
that doesn’t mean DCs don’t face challenges of their
own. For facilities tasked with filling direct-to-con-
sumer orders, for instance, one of the biggest
headaches is the handling and picking of individual
items or “eaches.”
Distribution centers today can
deploy automated equipment to
remove cases from a pallet, but that’s
not practical with eaches. What makes
the task of opening a box and retriev-
ing an item so tough to automate is
that each case could contain items of
different sizes, shapes, and textures. (If
the items were uniform in size, as with
a tote of the same-shaped milk jugs,
then automation becomes more feasi-
ble. But that’s not typically the case in
omnichannel fulfillment operations.)

As a result, it’s still a very manually intensive task to pick, pack, and ship an individual order. And that means a lot of workers are required.

What’s needed to get around that problem is a robot,
a humanoid machine with eyes, arms, hands, and feet.
Granted, there are robot-like machines in use today.
Take the bots from Kiva Systems, for instance. Although
they may be known as robotic fulfillment devices,
Kiva’s bots are not true robots, however. They’re mere-
ly mechanized shuttles that ferry totes to a worker, who
then must pick out the items. The advantage here is
that the worker doesn’t have to waste time traveling
around the warehouse or DC to find the item to select.