Warehouse automation: The missing link in your supply chain

When you place an order online, whether that’s directly to your door or to pick up in-store – you expect it to be available fast. If it’s faulty, you’re also expecting a simple and seamless returns or exchanges process. It’s a typical assumption for today’s consumer and has been for some time. For warehouses and distribution hubs, this has meant a constant pressure to get orders processed, packaged, loaded, and sent out to customers as efficiently as possible.

But things are about to get a whole lot easier.

Why? Warehouse automation. The simple fact is, that within all these processes, there are many moving parts, and robots can improve the efficiency of nearly all these stages. It means operations can be conducted night and day, at a consistent level of quality and productivity, performing tasks that would require more labour and time to achieve.

With the potential to increase throughput whilst lowering costs and improving safety, it’s predicted robotic automation will experience a huge surge in growth over the next five years. And as the market for autonomous robots grows, even the smallest scaled supply chains will only become more fluid.

What can our robots already do in a supply chain?

Picking and packing: Our own AMRs have reduced up to 10 miles of walking per day for pickers, reducing the need for walking almost entirely. Instead, our customers’ operatives now work from dedicated picking stations, where robots transport the same loads that would other be picked manually.

Lifting heavy loads: Thanks to the counterweight mechanism built into our VNP15 forklift, large loads can be carried to great heights, without the need for a human operative. The carefully calculated balance makes the entire system far more effective at every skill set you need from a high-quality automated forklift.

Store more: Our CTU robot delivers unmanned picking and carrying capabilities in narrow-laneway shelf scenarios. It’s capable of handling multiple SKUs and reaching heights of up to 8 meters – making it perfect for high-position storage.

Save space: Combined with the minimal infrastructure needed for navigation and mobility, our Q series can keep your manufacturing processes moving without wasting valuable facility floor space. Allowing your business more room for equipment, materials, and anything else you might need.

Moving product lines: Robots can carry whole production stations to workers so they can complete their assembly tasks. Once a task is complete, the robot will then carry the item along the production line to keep operations moving smoothly and efficiently.

Integrating technologies: As more warehouse and logistics environments start to integrate robotics in their operations – it’s important to find providers with the ability to connect to the existing technology in your warehouse. Using our in-house engineering, automation control and software development teams, Wise Robotics can interface with the most complex of scenarios.