How would it affect your business if you could slash your warehouse human resource costs by up to 50%, add 24 x 7 shifts that significantly boost your production capacity and have visibility to troves of up to the minute data on all aspects of your operation? Warehouse robotics systems can help you reshape your business, reducing expenses, increasing productivity and strengthening profitability.

Types of Warehouse Robots

While some types of warehouse robotics solutions have been in use for a very long time, others are bleeding edge technologies that may fundamentally change the distribution and warehousing business as we know it. The main categories of robotics system are:

Articulated Robotic Arms: Robotic arms with multiple joints can grasp and move goods in a warehouse. They're typically applied to receiving tasks, such as moving items from pallets to racking, or in production scenarios, for picking and packing.

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles: Unmanned aerial vehicles, more frequently know as drones, can maintain live inventory visibility in a facility through the use of RFID technology.

Automated Storage and Retrieval Systems (AS/RS) : AS/RS can retrieve goods from racks and put items in their appropriate storage positions. Examples of AS/RS solutions are horizontal or vertical carousel systems, aisle cranes and pallet shuttle systems.

Goods-to-Person technology (G2P): In place of using human labor to pick items from racks and bins, G2P technology uses robots to deliver products to picking stations, where operators are positioned to fill orders as products are delivered.

Automated Guided Vehicles (AGVs) : AGVs, like self-driving pallet jacks, forklift or carts, transfer inventory from one area to another inside a warehouse. Cart based AGVs are often called Automatic Guided Carts, or AGCs.

Autonomous Mobile Robots (AMRs) : Like AGVs and AGCs, Autonomous Mobile Robots can transfer items across a warehouse autonomously. In contrast to AGVs and AGCs, which move along set routes often directed by magnetic strips or wire tracks, AMRs rely on maps, cameras and sensors to maneuver more flexible routes by analyzing their environment.

Applications For Warehouse Robots

Until recently, robotic applications in distribution centers and warehouses, warehouses and distribution centers were restricted to a handful of taks. As technology has evolved, robotic capabilities have flourished and they can now be applied to almost any task in a warehouse:

Loading and unloading: While full automation of unloading and loading trucks is not yet a reality, automated systems like AGVs and conveyors can be employed to enhance your loading dock speed.

Palletizing and de-palletizing: Robotic systems are perfect for tedious, recurrent work like palletizing. Palletizizing robots normally employ a special End-of-Arm Tool to grab products and position them on a pallet. They're often coupled with conveyor systems that transport products to the palletizing area.

Sorting: Robotic sortation systems must have the ability to pick up objects, recognize them and put them in a suitable storage slot or bin. As goods move along a conveyor, these systems use cameras to identify individual items and select them.

Picking: The vast majority of workforce costs in a warehouse are a result of order picking functions, and robotic picking tehnologies have been around for quite some time to help resolve this issue. However, today's robotic picking solutions offer greater speed, better accuracy, enhanced efficiency and superior value as compared to systems of just a few years ago.

Packaging: Robotic solutions are ideal for repetitive and tedious tasks like packaging. They may also be put to use for more advanced jobs like weighing, dimensioning and cartonizing.

Transportation: Robotic transportation systems have wide-scale use in warehouses, from simple AGCs/AGVs to AS/RS integrated conveyors and AMRs.

Storage: AS/RS systems emoby many types of warehouse robots, including pallet shuttles, mini-load systems and cranes. AS/RS is also sometimes used together with mobile racking systems to optimize space utilization.

Delivery: Major e-com companies are experimenting with autonomous delivery drones, self-driving trucks and other emerging tech that will transform home and warehouse delivery options in the next decade.

Replenishment: Using RFID to keep track of inventory, warehouse drones can survey barcode labels up to 50% faster than manual scanning and relay inventory data back to the WMS in real time.

Industrial Robotics Companies Near Me

If you're interested in learning more about industrial robotic solutions for your business, get in touch with an automation expert at Raymond West today!

Raymond West's Calexico facility serves Imperial County and Yuma County, Including Calexico, Brawley, El Centro, San Luis, Yuma and surrounding areas.

Raymond West | Calexico Material Handling Equipment Supplier

285 Rood Rd
Calexico, CA 92231
(760) 768-8700