Varner, one of northern Europe’s largest fashion groups, has chosen AutoStore
The expansion means that the existing AutoStore facility – an automated robotic solution for bins – is growing from today’s 60,000 bins to 116,000 bins and will be equipped with a total of 224 robots.
As part of the collaboration with AutoStore, a new design of workstations for pick and pack, storage, returns and hanging garment handling has been developed.
If You Want a Robot to Learn Better, Be a Jerk to It
When humans give robots “tough love” by trying to knock objects out of their hands, it actually helps them find the best ways to hold things.
In what will go down as one of the greatest robotics experiments ever, a few years back researchers in Japan let a robot loose in a mall and watched how kids reacted. Far from the sense of wonder you might expect from children, the mood soured into a sense of concern for the next generation, as the kids proceeded to kick and punch the robot and call it names
Watch Fanuc's New Logistics Robot at Pack Expo
Robots for picking, packing, and palletizing. PLC motion software allows programming via ladder logic.
The Fresh Grocer Testing Micro-Fulfillment Stores from Takeoff
On the tech front, the cooperative recently extended an automated inventory tracking pilot program that uses shelf camera-based computer vision to track what’s on the shelves through hourly data updates. It’s also testing 10 micro-fulfillment stores in partnership with Takeoff Technologies for online orders for cooperative member Inserra Supermarkets and its ShopRite stores.
At Sam’s Club, a Marriage of Micro-Fulfillment and Traditional Retail
Big-box stores like Walmart, Target and Meijer are focused on adding e-commerce fulfillment operations to their existing stores. What's interesting about the Sam's Club test is that the company is doing the reverse — adding retail to an online fulfillment site.
Metro Vancouver "Highly Likely" to Run Out of Industrial Space: Report
Analysts recommend a trio of approaches that intensify and densify industrial land use, which results in spaces that are suitable for smaller scale industrial businesses. But the report acknowledges that this method generally does not accommodate very large manufacturing or logistics uses.
DSV to Deploy Drones in Partnership with Air Canada
“Our strong partnership with Air Canada Cargo and now DDC will offer our current and potential partners best-in-class solutions and service excellence that is scalable and futureproof. We have looked to overcome some of today’s challenges by investing in tomorrow’s opportunities, and we are ready for the next steps.”
—- Michael Zahra, president & chief executive of DDC
How Can Best Buy Offer for Free Something that Amazon Charges For?
One of the key initiatives Best Buy undertook as it turned itself around over the past seven years was using its stores to fulfill online orders. By using its stores to ship online orders, Best Buy is taking advantage of over 1,000 mini-distribution centers that are already close to where its customers live. Around 70% of the population lives within 10 miles of a Best Buy store, according to the company.
Target, Amazon, Kroger and Others Have Invested $28 Billion in E-Commerce in 18 Months.
In many ways, food and groceries are the new oil. Of all the purchases made on an annual basis by consumers, food and groceries are purchased the most. Companies like Amazon, Walmart, Google (which has a woeful strategy for groceries) and Uber all have a desire to become a leader in groceries. With an annual market of nearly $800 billion, groceries are strategic hence the reason why so many companies are trying to win the grocery wars.
Some of the Leading Brands in the U.S. are Planning Micro-Fulfillment Centers
We are designing and building an entirely new logistics infrastructure in cities so that on-demand fulfillment and delivery can happen faster, cheaper and at scale
Elram Goren, CEO, Fabric
Grocery Chains Broaden Automation with Micro-Fulfillment Centers
The Micro-Fulfillment Centers are designed to provide a lower cost-to-serve by covering the expense of order assembly and last-mile delivery/pickup. Takeoff said the artificial intelligence-enabled robots can assemble grocery orders of up to 60 items in less than five minutes, a fraction of the speed — and cost — of current manual-picking options.
UPS teams up with Stamps.com to reduce friction for shippers
Stamps.com is the company behind e-commerce platforms ShipStation, ShippingEasy, ShipWorks, Stamps.com and Endicia. It has 740,000 subscribers across these platforms, many of which are considered smaller shippers. As e-commerce shipping speeds up, they may seek to move away from USPS and toward more premium services. Stamps.com ended its exclusive partnership with USPS early in 2019, naming a lack of 2-day service as part of the reasoning.
Ross Stores to Build Massive 2 Million Square Feet Automated DC
Ross Stores, Inc. has chosen Waller County to build an automated distribution facility that will be more than 2 million square feet. By comparison, this facility will be twice the size of the Amazon Fulfillment Center which opened in January 2018.
Sally Beauty plans new 500,000 square feet automated DC
New 500,000 square foot automated distribution center in Denton County, Texas, is on track for opening by March 2020. The operation will create 270 new jobs in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.
Ben E. Keith plans automation for new Albuquerque warehouse
The new facility will have an automated system that sorts products more efficiently and allows the company to store more items on-site.
Award design that fully automates the loading process
Gray & Adams, the leading supplier of temperature-controlled semi-trailers and rigid vehicle bodywork, has designed an automated loading pod, built inside a 15.6m refrigerated body, that holds 60 pallets at -22 degrees C. This innovation, coupled with a 44-pallet capacity double deck trailer, can be loaded in under seven minutes, automatically – a first for the UK.
Insights from 3PL Value Creation Summit this week in Chicago
Warehousing customers are still weighing the arbitrage between labor and automation; many are hesitant to invest in expensive robotics because they think the cost will come down significantly in the next few years. But Brian Smith, president and chief executive officer of Kansas City-based Wagner Logistics, said that companies offering warehouse robotics have gotten creative with financing. Low-cost, short-term leases are becoming more common.
But it appears there are still gaps in the kinds of warehouse robots that are available. Russell Leo, the president and CEO of RLS Logistics said:
“in frozen facilities robotics goes out the window.” Instead, to free up capacity and increase throughput, RLS has implemented mobile racks that can slide together or come apart to give workers access to SKUs when they’re needed
Walmart’s experiment with robotics
The response from store employees has been even more surprising: they recognize that the robots are there to help, have given them names, which they then display on a badge with that name, and are happy to explain their role to customers, even after the trial period during which they were accompanied by staff. Walmart staff are thankful to the robots for relieving them of the task of shelf checking, and consider them a tool at their service, a technology that helps them or works for them. In other words, they don’t see themselves under threat of being replaced.