The time has come for SMEs to embrace warehouse automation

“We took a leap of faith when we moved from a tra­di­tion­al paper-based, man­u­al ware­house to a robo­tised one and although we did as much research as we could into poten­tial impacts on the busi­ness and our peo­ple, there were still a whole lot of ques­tion marks.”

So says Ian Shay, direc­tor of L&S Engi­neers, which stocks in excess of 35,000 spare parts for con­struc­tion, plant hire and the gen­er­al pub­lic, and employs 100 peo­ple.

Since it invest­ed about £1 mil­lion in the instal­la­tion of 40 robots 15 months ago, the firm’s 25,000 sq ft ware­house has dou­bled its dai­ly ship­ments and halved the error rate. Dai­ly mileage among the staff has been slashed from between five and 10 to prac­ti­cal­ly zero.

“Like every oth­er retail­er, we’d ogled Amazon’s tech­nol­o­gy for many years but didn’t think it pos­si­ble that a small ‘wid­gets-in-bins’ type of oper­a­tion like ours could ever use some­thing sim­i­lar,” says Shay.

It has, he says, now “sur­passed” all its expec­ta­tions in terms of added effi­cien­cy, and he urges oth­er small and medi­um-sized enter­pris­es (SMEs) to “fol­low our exam­ple and take a leap into the unknown”.

It took until 2019 for the UK to catch up with the glob­al aver­age of 85 robots per 10,000 employ­ees and today, use of automa­tion per se con­tin­ues to lag behind that of oth­er indus­tri­alised nations.

Price has his­tor­i­cal­ly been an inhibitor, as has the fear of slow pay­back. Yet at a time when prices are falling and return on invest­ment looks increas­ing­ly attrac­tive, it’s the belief that some firms are sim­ply too small for a tech over­haul that is prov­ing per­ni­cious.

Dull, dirty, dangerous work

“The truth is that any busi­ness which has a ware­house should be look­ing to auto­mate, even if the scale of the oper­a­tion dic­tates that this should be a semi-auto­mat­ed pal­let wrap­per rather than an all-singing and danc­ing robot,” says George Thomp­son, chair of the British Automa­tion and Robot Asso­ci­a­tion (BARA).

With labour short­ages mak­ing an impact through­out ware­hous­ing and logis­tics, he believes SMEs can use automa­tion to boost recruit­ment and reten­tion, as well as cut future legal bills.

“Ware­house work is often dull, dirty and dan­ger­ous, and all too many busi­ness­es face employ­ee lit­i­ga­tion costs fur­ther down the line as a direct result,” says Thomp­son.  

“There’s no val­ue in adding a wal­nut to a Wal­nut Whip, so why not leave the rou­tine stuff to the machines and allow human beings to do more of the inter­est­ing, val­ue-added tasks that keep them engaged and pro­duc­tive?” he says. 

Anoth­er myth BARA is keen to scotch is that automa­tion involves tear­ing up exist­ing ware­house facil­i­ties and start­ing again from scratch. 

From the col­lab­o­ra­tive robot, known as a cobot – which works along­side staff with­out the need for safe­ty devices – to the autonomous mobile robot or auto­mat­ed guid­ed vehi­cle, the vari­ety of tech solu­tions now on the mar­ket have made retro­fitting com­mon­place.

For SMEs unwill­ing to take any finan­cial risk, robot­ics as a ser­vice (RaaS) is also prov­ing an attrac­tive way in.

Rent-a-robot

Devised to pro­vide max­i­mum flex­i­bil­i­ty, the RaaS busi­ness mod­el – where SMEs pay a small upfront fee to lease robot­ic devices, as well as ser­vices such as main­te­nance – allows busi­ness­es to scale up and down at speed in response to chang­ing mar­ket con­di­tions.

Along with SaaS, ware­house shar­ing or third-par­ty logis­tics, try­ing before you buy is viewed by the indus­try as a game chang­er in terms of adop­tion by SMEs with no pre­vi­ous expe­ri­ence of automa­tion.

One such firm, Odd­box, which was start­ed in 2016 as a response to food waste, deliv­ers 45,000 box­es of “wonky” fresh pro­duce direct­ly to cus­tomers’ doorsteps each week.

In a bid to expand its prod­uct offer, the firm recent­ly com­mis­sioned a fea­si­bil­i­ty study into semi-automa­tion of its two pro­duc­tion lines, an exer­cise that has giv­en chief oper­at­ing offi­cer Phil Eaves much food for thought.

“We were giv­en two sce­nar­ios by our con­sul­tan­cy: one cost­ing under £1 mil­lion and using the exist­ing ware­house facil­i­ties, and the oth­er cost­ing more than £5 mil­lion and involv­ing mov­ing to pur­pose-built premis­es.”

Hav­ing cho­sen to retro-fit, the firm is now con­sid­er­ing a £750,000 invest­ment, a move that Eaves says is intend­ed to boost cus­tomer sat­is­fac­tion rather than speed of through­put.

“For us, a goods-to-per­son sys­tem makes far more sense than a robot, which may be able to han­dle rasp­ber­ries or mel­ons but will not be able to han­dle every­thing in the way that a human being can,” he says.

By replac­ing paper labels – which tell a pack­er that a par­tic­u­lar cus­tomer wants to try avo­ca­do, say, but can’t abide broc­coli – with an auto­mat­ed con­trol sys­tem, which has already iden­ti­fied what is required for each box, the firm aims to expand its range with­out adding to staff num­bers.

“At this stage, we’re still look­ing at the num­bers but we’ll only go ahead with the invest­ment if we are sure the pay­back can be achieved,” Eaves adds.  

Robots may no longer be the stuff of sci­ence fic­tion but the major­i­ty of SMEs need the help of a spe­cial­ist automa­tion con­sul­tan­cy or “inte­gra­tor” before they decide on a strat­e­gy.

Thomp­son advis­es call­ing in two or three such experts, just as you would with plumbers or elec­tri­cians, and “lis­ten­ing care­ful­ly to what they have to say about any pinch points you’re expe­ri­enc­ing on the pro­duc­tion line”. 

While most lines are either starved of prod­uct or over-sat­u­rat­ed, he believes that it takes a “fresh pair of eyes to iden­ti­fy the prob­lem, locate exact­ly where it’s com­ing from and build the right tech solu­tion”.

For Shay, the new robots have not only boost­ed effi­cien­cy but have made the ware­house a more attrac­tive place to work in.

“As soon as you see how effort­less­ly the robots move about and take in the qui­eter, calmer atmos­phere, you know that this is the only way for­ward.

“Robots are the future – pure and sim­ple – and for us, it was a risk worth tak­ing.”