Optimize Every Second of Every Fulfillment Workflow with Up to 30% Fewer Robots
The scarcity of labor resources and high costs of robotics ownership are pushing fulfillment companies to rethink their automation strategies. Zebra addressed these challenges head on in a recent Making the Case report published in collaboration with Modern Materials Handling.
This report delves into the top challenges fulfillment operations are dealing with on the robotics front today. It reveals how a collaborative approach to autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) can help you overcome automation hurdles, operate more efficiently, and enhance overall performance and profitability.
Legacy Systems Weren’t Designed to Optimize Your Profits
Traditional AMR fulfillment methodologies are caught in a cycle of inefficiency that undermines your return on investment (ROI). Robots frequently remain idle in these systems, whether they’re waiting for work to be inducted, standing by in aisles for pickers to locate them, or parked at drop-off points queued for work to be removed. Workers can also be held back by slow-moving robots that limit their productivity. The financial impacts can be substantial when you multiply these challenges across dozens of robots and multiple facilities.
To make matters worse, person-to-goods (P2G) pick solution designs have been largely stagnant for more than a decade. They’re also getting more expensive, effectively driving up the total cost of ownership (TCO). Today’s fulfillment operations leaders are looking for automation investments that deliver real cash flow improvements.
Optimizing AMR Utilization for Peak Performance
AMRs can only go so fast, so they must optimally perform to achieve the desired ROI. Most of the waste — and as a result, cost of legacy AMR solutions — happens when robots are waiting for operators, and operators are engaged in undirected work.
The answer, therefore, isn’t to add more robots or hire additional workers but to make both more efficient. The good news is there’s a way to start getting more benefit from every robotics investment, and quickly.
Transforming Fulfillment Operations Overnight
With Zebra Symmetry™ Fulfillment and the Team Intelligence picking methodology, employees use wearables that direct them on precise, optimized paths. Teams of AMRs move detachable carts in a “leapfrog” pattern to ideal locations ahead of human workers, allowing more items to be picked in less time.
In this environment, workers and robots always have orchestrated work assignments, which means there’s never a robot without a picker or vice versa.
Developed to help companies realize the full potential of AMR-assisted picking, the solution uses a three-pronged approach to help workers pick more items in less time while reducing robot fleet sizes:
1. Utilization balance: Accumulation is achieved more cost effectively by buffering with inexpensive carts, instead of additional robots or labor.
2. Greater cubic capacity: Detachable carts eliminate AMR wait times and boost pick density, reducing your robot count by up to 30% compared to AMR solutions with integrated payloads, while handling 150 to 300% more capacity.
3. Optimized pick paths: Workers and robots always have orchestrated work assignments. Employees receive precise instructions on what and where to pick, accelerating the entire operation.
Additionally, warehouse managers gain real-time visibility into all activities, enhancing operational oversight.
Discover How You Can Get More From Your Robotics Investment
By combining a collaborative fulfillment approach with an advanced picking methodology, Zebra Symmetry Fulfillment helps robots and pickers work more efficiently and effectively.
Our recent report includes a simulation demonstrating how a real-world fulfillment operation reduced its automation costs by 30% with no loss of daily order volume productivity, resulting in six-figure savings annually. It also highlights specific benefits the solution can deliver to VPs of operations, solution engineering or continuous improvement as well as CFOs.
To learn more about how this seamlessly integrated fulfillment workflow translates into operational costs, fewer errors, reduced waste, optimized resource utilization and a healthier bottom line, download the full report: Making the Case for Collaborative, Highly Efficient Fulfillment Solutions.
