At a shareholder event this past spring, Walmart
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Executives led investors on a tour of the retail giant’s first fully automated distribution center, a 1.4 million-square-foot facility in Brooksville, Florida.
The visitors were wowed. Their best-laid plans for future efficiencies were literally sorting themselves out. One year earlier, Walmart took a minority stake in Symbotic, a warehouse technology company. Soon enough, robots and self-driving forklifts will be in the majority at dozens of Walmart’s regional distribution centers.
And yet … Walmart insists its workforce will not be reduced, only shifted. Machines will unload more pallets. Humans will make more deliveries.
Automation is about increasing capacity, not cutting jobs, Walmart supply chain stewards often stress.
It’s a sentiment echoed by the logistics industry at large. But can mere mortals really compete with industrial machines that keep getting better, faster and more adaptive?
Edison, New Jersey-based Romark Logistics manages more than 8 million square feet of warehouse space for third-party retailers.
Last December, Romark turned to the New Jersey Institute of Technology to help map out a future in which more robots could be rolled out sensibly, and safely, sans backlash from employees. For the equipment, Romark partnered with Vecna Robotics, known for its Automated Tuggers, or “ATGs,” and for automated forklifts.
In the past 11 months, Romark deployed six Vecna ATGs at a site at which logistics is handled for a major food and beverage company. The ATGs took the place of forklifts and manual equipment in a co-packaging area, which is approximately 215,000 square feet.
Education and training efforts have been paramount at every step of each well-illuminated, clearly delineated path, so as to not alienate human workers on which Romark still places a premium, says Romark’s Ryan DeHoff, director of packaging and distribution.
Romark still runs out more than two dozen human employees per shift, he says. If they glance around the floor, they’ll notice flat screen monitors with videos showcasing the robot fleet at its best, a sort of highlight reel of high-test loading and hauling.
“We are helping our people to embrace and understand the technology,” DeHoff explains. “And that its implementation is not about replacing people but rather forming a cohesive team of human and robots to create a safe and efficient operation.”
Ronald Leibman, a supply chain specialist at the law firm McCarter & English, says that he works with dozens of logistics operations around the world, and he stresses how their use of automation ranges from “a lot to some to not at all.”
“Robots are nice but they are not a panacea,” Leibman says.
If robots are taking over, they have been taking their time.
In the late 1960s, big auto makers welcomed caged robotic arms (not safe for people to be around), stirring more innovations under the rubric of advanced manufacturing. Eventually automation swept over the logistics sector as it grew, globalized and became more complex. Automatic conveyor systems have been around for decades at warehouses. The space has been truly modernizing for the better part of the past 15 years with the advent of: automated storage and retrieval systems; barcodes and LED lights which help workers locate items; voice-tasking software to simplify a picker’s routine; and, in more recent years, the rise of collaborative mobile robots.
Third-party logistics provider ES3 famously helped cut the edge of grocery store supply chain possibilities with its construction and later the expansion, in 2009, of a state-of-the-art facility in York, Pennsylvania. It’s known for being awe-strikingly soup-to-nuts automated—and for encompassing a vertical stacking tower standing as tall as the Statue of Liberty.
Warehouse automation is bound to garner more attention if current e-commerce and labor trends persist.
Vecna reports helping some clients nearly double their throughput after implementing mobile robots in their facilities. So, there are clear-cut rewards.
However, there are risks. Warehouse safety issues keep winnowing their way into the public consciousness.
A Washington Post report published over Thanksgiving weekend raised serious questions surrounding the death of a worker struck by a conveyor at an Amazon
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Amazon spokesperson Maureen Lynch Vogel expressed condolences to the worker’s family. She stressed, as strenuously as she could, how the company “always invests in safety.”
The rolling out of robots in the U.S. supply chain has been ongoing for years but relative to where it is likely heading it would seem the trend is really only just starting.
“It’s not a question of man versus machine,” says Kuka Robotics’ Denise Stafford, manager of U.S. business development. “It’s about striking a balance of human workers and robots with human labor at the center of all considerations. Because there is no reason to write the human workers off. They do too many things well.”
This article is the third and final part of a three-part series on warehouse safety and automation.
Read the full article here