Locus Robotics announces this week that they have surpassed the “200M units picked” milestone by a Locusbot autonomous mobile robot (AMR). The 200 millionth picked item was achieved at a Boots facility in the U.K. Locus Robotics is able to track the picking operations of all of its systems worldwide, and thus consolidate this data to determine when they reached the milestone.
200M Units Picked Is Significant
“We are thrilled to have reached the 200 million units picked milestone,” said Rick Faulk, CEO, Locus Robotics.
“As more and more shoppers move online, and as we quickly approach what is expected to be the biggest – and most challenging – holiday retail season yet, retailers are turning to AMRs to innovate to meet growing demand and avoid risking losing valuable customers.”
Locus Robotics was an early market entrant in the person-to-goods (P2G) workflow market for warehouse automation, coming to market in 2014. With lengthy experience in the e-commerce fulfillment market they have built a deep customer base and deployed thousands of Locusbots into warehouses and distribution centers worldwide.
In light of the shifting retail landscape, Locus Robotics expects to quickly surpass a quarter-billion units picked by Black Friday, 2020. The explosion of online shopping has put increasing pressure on fulfillment companies to adequately staff their fulfillment teams to meet the growing number of orders and ensure that items are picked and packed as efficiently as possible. Locus is seeing increasing demand for its solution, which is proven to improve fulfillment efficiency and productivity 200-300%.
Person-to-Goods Workflow For Warehouse Automation
This illustration, from the Warehouse Solutions Buyers Guide, shows the various categories of warehouse workflow. (Image copyright by The Mobile Robot Guide)
In P2G workflow, order picking Associates walk the aisles to pull order-specific quantities from in-aisle inventory locations. SKU items remain at their inventory locations until they are pulled for a specific order.You may already have Associates pushing carts through the warehouse as they pull items for specific orders. Bins, totes, or boxes are placed on the carts to help singulate specific customer orders. In addition, P2G fulfillment also covers mixed picking methods such as discrete, cluster, batch, zone, or wave.
Locusbot leads the picking Associate to the specific SKU location and instructs the Associate which item to pick through its onboard tablet user interface. An onboard barcode scanner verifies that the correct item was picked before being placed into the order tote. An individual Locusbot will traverse the warehouse to acquire all of the items for a specific order, before moving the completed order tote to the pack out station.
A Recommended Solution
The Mobile Robot Guide recently released the 2020 Warehouse Solutions Buyers Guide, that features a complete buying guide to all of the AMR-based warehouse solutions currently on the market. The Buyers Guide includes technical specification for over 75 solutions. If you are researching the warehouse solutions market, this guide will save you hours (or even days) of research time.
Locus Robotics was one of only two vendors to be awarded a Mobile Robot Guide Recommended Solution rating in this edition of the guide. This milestone is proof of Locus Robotics continued leadership in the marketplace.
