Distribution Centre Moves 40% More Stock Per Shift, Vendor Reported

Totes walking the wrong way

Picking itself was not the bottleneck. The bottleneck was the walk. Pickers spent nearly a third of every shift carrying finished totes from the picking aisles to the packing line, and that time added nothing to the order.

Throughput sat well below what the site's own capacity figures said it should reach, and overtime kept climbing. Managers could add people or add hours, and neither touched the root cause.

• Nearly a third of each shift lost to tote transport
• Throughput below the site's stated capacity
• Overtime rising from month to month

Mapping the floor before the robots moved

The supplier's team started by walking the main aisles and packing stations with site staff. That mapping set the routes the robots would follow and the points where filled totes would be dropped for collection.

The robot supplier configured the robots to shuttle filled totes from drop points to packing, so pickers could stay in their zones. The floor team was trained alongside the rollout, and the first two weeks ran before and after shift comparisons so everyone could see the change in their own numbers.

After go live, the route was reviewed weekly through the first quarter, with adjustments made as traffic patterns showed up on the floor.

• Map the main aisles and packing stations with the supplier's team
• Configure robots to shuttle filled totes from drop points to packing
• Train the floor team and run before and after shift comparisons for two weeks
• Review the route weekly through the first quarter

What the numbers showed

The supplier reports a 40% increase in items moved per shift across the trial period. Picker productivity rose 25% on the same headcount, which is the figure that matters most to a manager deciding whether the labor pool needs to grow.

Payback came in at 11 months, according to the same reporting. Overtime spend fell sharply from the second month onward, and the drop was visible on the floor before it showed up in the monthly totals.

Taken together, the picture is of a site that kept its people, moved more stock through the same shifts, and stopped paying for the walk. The gains came from removing the transport step, not from pushing pickers harder.

What this means for a site weighing a similar move

The lesson sits in the handoffs, not in the robot itself. The first thing to find is where the time goes between picking and packing, and a site that maps its aisles and packing lanes before committing to anything is starting in the right place.

Service Robot Co. is a full service, OEM neutral commercial robot integrator for US businesses. We select the right robots across manufacturers, then finance, deploy, integrate, train, and service every unit through a nationwide US engineer network. Customers lease our robots on a lease running three years, with one fixed payment quoted after a site assessment. That assessment is where aisle and packing lane mapping starts, with layout, traffic and shift pattern all taken into account before the payment is set.

For a warehouse comparing autonomous mobile robot options, robot leasing for business keeps the capital question simple, and one partner covering deployment, training and service means one point of contact when a route needs changing.