Decathlon, the world’s largest sporting items retailer, mentioned on Tuesday that it is seeing “important” productiveness features at seven of its European warehouses, the place it has been utilizing robots from Exotec to kind and pack gadgets for brick-and-mortar shops.
Exotec’s CEO and cofounder, Romain Moulin, mentioned the advantages run throughout the board, from lowered warehouse footprint to elevated gadgets shipped out of the amenities.
At its Portugal warehouse, Decathlon mentioned the location doubled the variety of orders it could actually put together from 57,000 to 114,000.
The human work can also be altering, as workers are strolling much less all through the warehouse or being reassigned completely, Moulin mentioned.
“The working situations are a lot better,” Moulin informed Enterprise Insider.
Exotec’s robots usually are not bipedal humanoids. Its flagship product, called Skypods, is a fleet of wheeled robots — suppose rectangular Roombas — that may transfer, retailer, and retrieve a whole bunch of hundreds of things a day from storage bins stacked on their heads.
Courtesy Exotec
The robots additionally transfer three-dimensionally. Every Skypod attaches to Exotec’s proprietary storage rack and may climb as much as about 46 toes. It is an vital function that Moulin mentioned permits shoppers like Decathlon to cut back the footprint of warehouses — permitting employees to stroll much less — and enhance the density of things saved inside the ability.
With robotics and software program, Moulin’s firm is proposing a warehouse system that automates your complete circulation of products, from arrival to cargo, and standardizes it so firms can shortly adapt it throughout a number of websites.
The system might embrace 150 to 200 Skypods, automated depalletizers and palletizers, carton-opening machines, and RFID tunnels that scan gadgets on a conveyor belt.
“Each 4 months, we might begin a brand new warehouse,” Moulin mentioned.
Human work adjustments
In a typical, brownfield warehouse, gadgets are organized on cabinets stacked 6 to 7 toes excessive to accommodate the peak of human employees. These employees, known as pickers, then push round carts and retrieve gadgets from the cabinets to organize an order.
This, in flip, requires firms to hunt bigger areas to accommodate elevated shelf house as they face huge order demand. The typical warehouse dimension is about 194,000 sq. toes, Moulin mentioned.
“That is why employees are doing 10 kilometers per day, and that is why density is so low,” the Exotec CEO mentioned.
Courtesy Exotec
With automation, that adjustments. Moulin mentioned Exotec’s robotics platform can scale back a warehouse’s footprint to 65,000 sq. toes; that does not imply warehouses have to downsize. Corporations can both dedicate more room to shelving gadgets or to different operations.
Decathlon, which has greater than 1,800 shops and 101,000 workers, mentioned strolling distance for pickers at its logistics web site within the UK has decreased from over 6 miles to below 1 mile per day.
A US-based Decathlon spokesperson didn’t instantly return a request for remark.
The corporate additionally mentioned it is seeing enhancements in workplace safety. On the identical UK web site, Decathlon mentioned office incidents associated to order selecting have decreased from 1 in 5,000 to 1 in 10,000.
A part of that is also attributed to Exotec’s platform, which permits pickers to be moved to different operations, Moulin mentioned.
An Exotec spokesperson mentioned that, at one web site, 50 folks had been designated pickers earlier than Skypods had been put in. Now, the quantity has dropped to 12 pickers, whereas different employees had been reassigned to different duties.
Moulin mentioned firms shift these employees to different jobs, akin to return or restore operations, whereas throughput will increase.
In response to Decathlon, one warehouse in France practically doubled the variety of shops it could actually replenish, from 37 to 73. At its Portugal web site, the variety of shops has elevated from 41 to 73.
Robots needn’t look human
The massive guess for retailers, Moulin mentioned, is that warehouse automation might help firms transfer extra items whereas easing persistent labor shortages.
“All of our clients — in Europe, within the US, in Japan — say the identical factor, ‘I am unable to discover folks to do the job,'” Moulin mentioned, including that clients additionally need to double the throughput of their amenities.
Some industries are trying towards humanoid robots to unravel the labor hole. Automakers like Hyundai and Toyota are experimenting with bipedal bots, assigning them to easy duties.
Moulin mentioned the developments seen in AI and robotics are being utilized to Exotec’s platform, however his shoppers do not have a direct want for humanoids.
“We do not use a humanoid to push a cart doing 10 kilometers a day, as a result of that is precisely the issue with handbook selecting,” he mentioned. “So we use the simplest robots to maneuver stock and we energy it with AI.”
