Robots have been a feature of production lines in the manufacturing industry for many years; however, warehousing has always tended to be more labour intensive. Historically picking and packing goods is something that has required rather more intelligence than repetitive assembly operations; however, as robots improve, this is starting to change.
Smarter robots
As robots have begun to get smarter, they have started to gain a foothold in the distribution industry; for example, major online retailer Amazon is already making use of robot technology in its warehouses. Although the robots do not currently pick the goods themselves, Amazon uses a computer algorithm to work out which products are most popular and the robots then move these closer to human pickers to speed up the process.
The next step, of course, is to move towards more complete automation of the warehouse, which would mean robots being able to carry out the picking themselves. Obviously they need to be able to accurately identify products for this to work successfully, which means storage solutions such as Linbins will need to be identified with machine-readable labels such as magnetic strips, barcodes or RFID tags.
Picking goods from Linbins is only part of the operation, however. Packing presents a particular problem, especially when items of different sizes and shapes have to be sent together. At the moment this is a task that still requires human input; however, as robots improve, this is likely to change. Robots are already used in the dispatch process, sorting packages for shipping and weighing them to calculate carriage costs.
Robot advantages
The prospect of a fully automated warehouse carries many advantages. Without the need for a comfortable workspace, the warehouse would not need to be heated, or perhaps even lit, thereby saving on energy costs. Also robots do not take lunch breaks or holidays and do not fall ill. They will work around the clock without complaint, making it easy to extend working hours at times of peak demand without needing to recruit extra workers.
Robots are still relatively expensive to buy, but this will change as they gain in popularity. It is likely that any operation involved in storing and shipping large volumes of goods will eventually have to turn to automation to remain competitive.