Robotics revolution enables affordable automation

SPONSORED BY OWR

Ware­house robot­ics has bro­ken sig­nif­i­cant new ground in the world of ecom­merce and logis­tics, with the likes of Ama­zon and Oca­do pio­neer­ing its use. The enor­mous costs asso­ci­at­ed with adopt­ing the tech­nol­o­gy, how­ev­er, meant flex­i­ble robot­ics was long seen as unvi­able for most organ­i­sa­tions.

Mean­while, cus­tomers have con­tin­ued to demand prod­ucts faster and cheap­er, but sup­ply chain inef­fi­cien­cies have meant com­pa­nies have been sig­nif­i­cant­ly squeezed in their oper­a­tional mar­gins while try­ing to com­pete with the more tech­no­log­i­cal­ly advanced giants of the indus­try. For­tu­nate­ly, the bar­ri­ers are now com­ing down.

The rapid advance­ment of robot­ics inno­va­tion has meant ware­house automa­tion is quick­ly becom­ing more main­stream, afford­able and acces­si­ble to com­pa­nies of all sizes, which are increas­ing­ly real­is­ing they can adopt the tech­nol­o­gy to reduce their costs.

The ecom­merce indus­try has had tra­di­tion­al automa­tion sys­tems for a long time now, but big machin­ery is fixed, it costs tens of mil­lions of pounds to install and only the big play­ers could access it. The rise of afford­able flex­i­ble automa­tion is dri­ving a robot­ics rev­o­lu­tion. With a new wave of inno­v­a­tive providers, com­pa­nies can start with one or hun­dreds of robots, leas­ing them or putting them against their cap­i­tal expen­di­ture, and it’s not fixed.

“The rise of affordable flexible automation is driving a robotics revolution”

“It’s now get­ting to the point where robot­ics is com­mer­cial­ly viable for every­one,” says David Hal­lam, founder and chief exec­u­tive of OW Robot­ics, which pro­vides flex­i­ble and scal­able ware­house automa­tion solu­tions.

“It was avail­able many years ago, but it was inher­ent­ly slow and very cost­ly. With flex­i­ble robot­ics, it’s becom­ing more main­stream and afford­able for small­er com­pa­nies, with return on invest­ment evi­denced with­in 18 to 24 months. Mean­while, a new gen­er­a­tion of exec­u­tives are see­ing its busi­ness case is unde­ni­able.

“Automa­tion isn’t just about replac­ing humans, but rather enhanc­ing their val­ue and util­is­ing the exist­ing work­force to do more. We spoke to a haulage firm recent­ly that employed over 50 fork­lift dri­vers to move goods from one side of the ware­house to the oth­er all day every day. That’s just not good busi­ness sense.

“Flex­i­ble robot­ics enables com­pa­nies to dri­ve sig­nif­i­cant oper­a­tional effi­cien­cies while util­is­ing exist­ing work­forces for high­er-val­ue tasks. Work­ers are also hap­pi­er because they’re no longer work­ing in harsh envi­ron­ments on monot­o­nous, labo­ri­ous tasks and they’re giv­en more respon­si­bil­i­ty.”

The coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic has ampli­fied oper­a­tional effi­cien­cies in sup­ply chains, dri­ving a big spike in inquiries for com­pa­nies such as OW Robot­ics. How­ev­er, the pan­dem­ic isn’t the only major event that has com­pli­cat­ed sup­ply chains. In Lon­don, the aver­age cost of a prod­uct pick­er is already around £26,000. With Brex­it, these labour costs are just going to keep ris­ing. Ware­hous­es are fight­ing for the same labour and the only way to attract more tal­ent is to offer more mon­ey and ben­e­fits, dwin­dling prof­it mar­gins even fur­ther.

OW Robot­ics’ tech­nol­o­gy is avail­able through a part­ner­ship with Hikro­bot, a robot­ics man­u­fac­tur­er whose tech­nol­o­gy has seen aver­age effi­cien­cy improve­ments of 90 per cent and labour cost sav­ings of 50 per cent. The solu­tions con­tain sim­ple and flex­i­ble com­po­nents that fit the needs of each busi­ness. As well as mul­ti-func­tion­al racks, it could be pick­ing sta­tions, pick­ing walls or replen­ish­ment sta­tions for tar­get­ed sup­port.

“For us, our pri­ma­ry focus is on logis­ti­cal move­ments, whether it be goods to per­son, A to B robot­ics or man­u­fac­tur­ing lines,” says Hal­lam. “We want to use the same tech­nol­o­gy not just in one area of a busi­ness, but every­where. That could mean start­ing with pick­ing prod­ucts, but then mov­ing the robot­ics to a zone, qual­i­ty stage or lor­ry.

“Look at how you can auto­mate along the way in log­i­cal steps because mak­ing one improve­ment could have a knock-on effect else­where, which means you’re just shift­ing the labour.

Automa­tion needs to tie into an over­all dig­i­tal strat­e­gy. Busi­ness­es needs to be will­ing to dis­rupt and embrace new tech­nol­o­gy a lot quick­er. The robot­ics rev­o­lu­tion is enabling end-to-end automa­tion and it’s acces­si­ble and afford­able to all busi­ness­es.”

For more infor­ma­tion and to find out more about book­ing a tour at the OW Robot­ics Demon­stra­tion Cen­tre, please vis­it www.owrobotics.co.uk/tour-2020/

"The rise of affordable flexible automation is driving a robotics revolution"