The Business Case for Robotics in Distribution Centers

Distribution and fulfillment (D&F) centers have been battling to meet the growing demands of e-commerce for quite some time. Those demands were already accelerating at a rate of 25%, but the COVID-19 pandemic saw consumer e-commerce sales grow an additional 50%. Currently, more than 80% of distribution centers (DCs) operate with a manual workforce and have a shrinking labor pool to choose from. To maximize operational efficiency within this “new normal,” DCs will need to consider integrating robotic warehouse solutions to make up for labor shortages and increase productivity.

While DCs have been operating with labor shortages for some time, the current e-commerce climate has highlighted the immediate need to overcome the limitations of using manual labor. Although robots are known for operating in repetitive and highly structured conditions, today’s robotic solutions can handle the far more complex and ever-changing environments of DCs, integrating data science for quick decision-making, increasing productivity, and taking charge of low-skilled tasks so that scarce labor can be better allocated elsewhere.

Download the white paper “The Business Case for Robotics in Distribution Centers” to learn how adopting robotic solutions can help you ease the rising costs of manual labor and generate return on investment (ROI) from automation much quicker than before.