Warehouses seek refuge in robots and automation

Robots, often now even with human names, are taking over much of the work in warehouses at a rapid pace. What are the driving forces behind the current wave of automation? And what role do logistics service providers play in it? “Automation is not only an interesting business case, but increasingly a necessity to be able to complete production at all.” 

One of the many warehouses in the Antwerp port area has been home to an AutoStore system since last autumn. This cube-shaped storage system has hundreds of stacks of plastic bins, 16 bins per stack, amounting to 31,000 bins in total. It holds 21,000 items that are sold via the web shops of Intergamma’s three do-it-yourself formulas: Gamma Netherlands, Gamma Belgium, and Karwei. “That is by no means the entire assortment,” says Joep Arts, Director Supply Chain at Intergamma. “After all, not everything lends itself to storage and order picking in this warehouse. For building and garden materials such as plasterboard, garden wood, bricks and sand, we use drop shipments and, recently, ship-from-store.”

On top of the storage system, 20 robots carry the bins containing picking stock to the three order picking stations. There, operators are ready to pick the right items and put them in shipping boxes. Thanks to this goods-to-man system, productivity is much higher than in the old situation, when operators had to walk along the racks themselves to pick the ordered items. “A large proportion of orders are placed in the evening. We offer next-day delivery for all orders that come in before 9pm, which sometimes leads to huge peaks in the evening. Now that the AutoStore system allows us to process larger volumes in a shorter time, we have less last-minute scaling up and down in manpower,” explains Arts.

Automation and robotization of warehouses has taken off in recent years. A recent Tilburg University survey of 47 Dutch companies with large warehouses confirms this. … … …

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