Building off its Shelf-to-Person industry leadership, Geekplus has pioneered a cross-docking PopPick solution at a cold chain facility for a global coffee retailer.
This supply chain innovation began, as many warehouse optimization projects do these days, with ecommerce. Faced with a surge in business volume, the customer could no longer rely on traditional manual picking and consolidation models to meet order and shipping demands. The solution was automation. Geekplus’ innovative picking and consolidation solution led to a 300-percent increase in picking efficiency and a 30-percent increase in throughput. For the customer, rapid and accurate handling and complex cross-docking consolidation across multiple routes was critical. By reducing cross-docking time to 3 hours or less, the retailer can now ensure the safety and freshness of food products for nearly 1,000 stores in Asia.
By integrating the cross-dock picking and consolidation process, the solution also reduces the amount of time employees spend in low-temperature environments.
To accomplish the innovation, Geekplus worked with an integration partner. This is the sixth collaboration between the companies.
Highlights of the new mobile robot innovation include:
This new model simplifies warehouse operations by completing cross-docking and consolidation in one station. Using the PopPick cross-dock process eliminates and optimizes consolidation areas, which can result in significant space savings for warehouse operators. In addition to reducing the space needed for operations, the efficient PopPick workstations significantly improve operational efficiency; when customers automate manual picking processes, they can easily experience a 3x improvement in efficiency with an overall throughput increase of 30%.
Precise and rapid cross-docking within 3 hours ensures the safety and freshness of food products during warehouse operations.
By reducing the duration of low-temperature work for employees and improving human-machine engineering, the new Geekplus PopPick cross-dock process enhances employee satisfaction. Moreover, through automatic unmanned outbound shipping at the PopPick workstation during the night, customers are able to achieve energy savings and emission reduction across the entire warehouse.
The optimization innovation starts with the Geekplus Shelf-to-Person PopPick solution, a cornerstone of the company’s Goods-to-Person mobile robot offerings. PopPick workstations utilize two retrieval arms and four presentation locations to present pickers with multiple 60-tote racks at one time, resulting in unrivaled throughput. The solution automatically allocates goods and order boxes to specially designed picking stations based on different distribution routes, simplifying employee operations and effectively improving the efficiency of cross-docking picking. After the merchandise picking is completed, PopPick automatically consolidates the goods. PopPick workstations can also automatically connect to conveyor lines, enabling 24-hour unmanned outbound shipping.
Operators looking to invest in automation may have concerns about automation replacing workers, but warehouse automation actually helps create jobs. That may seem counterintuitive, but think about it: In a traditional manual warehouse, order picking is an undesirable job. Workers must physically locate and collect the products or items that have been ordered by customers from the warehouse shelves. A main roadblock for workers starts before even selecting the product – finding the location can waste eat up a lot of time. Find, pick, pack, repeat -- all day long. That’s a lot of walking!
Mobile order fulfillment robots enable these pickers to work more efficiently while lowering the burnout rate for employees and making the job a more pleasant experience. Empowering workers with automated warehouse solutions allows them to effectively handle an ever-increasing flow of e-commerce orders. After integration with a suite of Goods-to-Person robot solutions, automation becomes a competitive advantage for companies while also serving as a worker recruitment tool.
Geekplus is confident the cross-dock picking and consolidation model will revolutionize cold chain logistics. With this first successful case, the company will continue innovation and exploration of new opportunities and scenarios, injecting new energy into the future of intelligent logistics.
Learn why Geekplus is your reliable partner for innovative order fulfillment solutions, allowing business to grow at their own pace and scale up quickly to meet new consumer demands.