40 n WAREHOUSING June 2023 www.drivesncontrols.com Mobile robots tackle retail challenges The challenges for major retailers, department stores and the FMCG (fast-moving consumer goods) businesses that supply them, just keep coming. This means many are having to maximise what they have, and this is where investment in automation – and specifically in AMRs (autonomous mobile robots) – can bring attractive rewards. AMRs can offer real productivity improvements with little or no extra labour cost, and training that is pretty straightforward. The warehouse staff’s working environment can be made less strenuous and often safer, which can help to retain the workforce. Productive use of expensive warehouse floor space is maximised and operations are not delayed significantly if a particular route is temporarily inaccessible. Supply chains have normalised to some extent since the Covid pandemic and the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine war. The online share of trade has dropped back to a “mere” 26% from its previous high of more than a third, and remains a serious gamechanger. Now we have the cost of living crisis with high rates of inflation eating into consumer purchasing volumes. Meanwhile, relatively new and disruptive market entrants – with grocery discounters being the most obvious example – continue to make inroads into the sector. The bricks-and-mortar retailers have responded in many and varied ways – investing in more attractive shop fittings, creating shopping “experiences”, offering better training to front-of-store staff, and adopting more useable point-of-sale technologies, not to mention continuing product innovation and development and more targeted and effective marketing and promotion. None of this comes cheap, but the expenditure will be all in vain if supply and distribution activities behind the store-front – and especially in warehouses and distribution centres – are not operating at peak efficiency. But improving productivity in warehouses is not straightforward. Throwing labour at the problem is not the option that it used to be. The workforce – or at least people prepared to work arduous shifts – just isn’t there any more and these are not the sorts of jobs that are likely to attract early retirees back into the labour force. Convenience stores There are other challenges – for example, the way that much of the grocery sector is pivoting towards smaller convenience-store formats is significantly changing the nature of distribution centre operations. There are fewer pallet loads being shipped out, and more replenishment of orders picked by the case on a “little and often” basis. Existing warehouses and equipment are not necessarily best suited to meeting these challenges efficiently. Rebuilding existing warehouses requires significant capital investment and is Well-implemented mobile robot installations can transform the productivity of order picking and internal transport in retailers’ warehouses, delivering rewards in challenging times for the sector, argues Frazer Watson, vice-president of sales for the UK and Ireland at the AMR manufacturer iFollow. Autonomous mobile robots offer retailers many potential benefits in their warehousing operations, including improved flexibility, safety and productivity, as well as lower labour costs
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