AutoStore’s first grocery-focused partner, StrongPoint, is building the world’s first automated solution that stores frozen foods in a warehouse cube facility, – all purpose-built for grocery retailers.
Until recently, frozen foods and robotic warehouses didn’t mix. The company that invented cube storage, AutoStore, just launched, together with StrongPoint, the world’s first multi-temperature cube grid, which allows the storage and retrieval of ambient, chilled, and frozen food items.
Before that frozen items were picked manually from a cold room or direct from freezers. By letting robots pick frozen groceries retailers can drastically reduce their costs – and emissions.
StrongPoint has developed a unique grocery automation solution, leveraging not only frozen automation but also the power of ultra-efficient manual picking of items not suitable for cube storage.
Automation, however, doesn’t necessarily equal hyper-efficiency. If just one stage of the process, such as consolidation or manual picking, isn’t optimised, it can drag down overall efficiency.
The StrongPoint grocery fulfilment solution is purpose-built by grocery experts and leverages technologies designed purely for groceries, handling everything from cold chains, perishable items and easily damaged products to a variety of last mile customer demands.
A well-kept secret in grocery automation is not about what should be automated but, counterintuitively, what should not be automated.
With the new frozen capabilities from AutoStore, it definitely makes sense to automate. For example, in the world’s first installation of a three-temperature grid, energy costs will likely be reduced by up to 40% due to less space needed to maintain a sub-zero temperature.
For many items, such as high-demand fast movers to bulky items, it makes more sense to pick these manually next to the automated grid.
But how? That’s where the non-automated magic comes in.
StrongPoint has developed the world’s most efficient manual picking solution to complement the robots. This uses a mixture of hardware and software to augment the power of human pickers to achieve picking speeds close to the world’s best automated solutions.
StrongPoint also offer the world’s first autonomous mobile robot that follows the picker in the store environment carrying a trolley.
By combining the precision of automation with the power of turbo-charged manual picking, grocery retailers get the best of both worlds: maximum efficiency and the highest return on investment.
To find out more about our automation solution with AutoStore, contact Strongpoint via our website here or send an email to our head of UK sales Tim Wheeler: tim.wheeler@strongpoint.com
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