After stock-holding costs labour is usually the highest single warehouse cost and if the warehouse is geared predominantly to order picking at the SKU level then labour can absorb 50% of picking costs. There are many ways of trimming labour costs and not all will involve heavy hardware investment, like pick-tolight and voice picking. But one issue is unavoidable and that is the need to meet serious challenges posed by a transformed retail sector based on multi-channel distribution where speed and accuracy of picked orders are expected from more demanding consumers. This means more warehouses will need to convert to primarily an order picking warehouses or, indeed, be replaced by new e-tailing centres geared entirely to serving customers directly or via click-and-collect points rather than shops. Thus the necessity to use labour more smartly will rise and the demand to replace it but how realistic is the view held by some big distribution companies about the near-term use of robots in the warehouse?

Charles-New-GreyRobots, of sorts, have been around in the warehouse for decades, most notably in the early stages typified by AGVs since the late 1970s. Then came automation in many forms, like mini stackers, which, while not meeting the traditional concept of a freeroaming robot, nevertheless had a big impact on order picking speeds.

After that came the predominantly software solutions like barcode laser reading, pick-to-light and voice picking, all of which could pay for themselves just by the big reductions in costly picking errors.

But for some industries traceability can be almost as important as cutting picking errors, particularly in food and pharma.

These relatively cheap and easyto- install investments will be in high demand over the next five years if a recent, international YouGov survey is any guide. This says that nine in ten distribution centre operators expect to adopt new, mobile devices and voicedirection technology to help them cope with Omni channel ecommerce.

Other research shows that 80% of logistics facilities today are still manual, so there is great potential to improve picking efficiency.

Back, however, to the warehouse robotics issue. Given that only certain industries like pharma, which have big profit margins, are the ones likely to embrace full automatic order picking because other, low-margin industries cannot justify the ROI, what chance is there that robots will be commonplace working in warehouses alongside people soon? Very high, seems to be the view of global parcel carrier, DHL.

Already testing how robots could play a role in its logistics, DHL says: “Robots will soon become standard in warehouses.” It goes on to say in its released report, Robotics in Logistics, “We believe that soon supply chains will see humans and robots working side by side to handle goods faster and more economically.”

The reasons robots have not made an impact on logistics yet are the complexity of work handling and wide variety of different things in an infinite number of combinations close to people and in confined spaces. Another reason is that such versatile robots would be highly costly. All that, however, is changing rapidly. The Baxter robot, for example, has been developed for assembly work, which with the help of six vision sensors is able to move around humans safely, and all for the astonishingly modest sum of US$25,000, less than the annual salary and social costs of human pickers. The robots also do not need holidays, go sick, strike and have time off for babies. The cost barrier, therefore, should not be a problem.

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