The optimization, integration, automation and management of material goods and data within the four walls of a warehouse or distribution center (DC), intralogistics have been getting a lot of attention lately due to the ongoing impacts of the pandemic, the growing labor shortage, the uptick in e-commerce orders and ever-evolving consumer preferences.
With the global robotics market on track to grow to US$45.5 million this year—and with 80% of current fulfillment centers lacking any type of automation—companies across all industries are experimenting with and implementing robotics in their warehouses, DCs and fulfillment centers.
Supporting this trend is a vendor base that’s optimizing advanced technology and using it to develop newer, better, and more useful machines that meet their own customers’ needs, according to a survey by The Peerless Research Group.
The key industry sectors represented for this survey include fabricated metals, industrial machinery, and plastics and rubber. The majority of companies (38.8%) have annual revenues of less than US$50 million, while 11.2% have somewhere between US$100 million to US$249.9 million in revenues and another 9.2% reported revenues of US$2.5 billion or more.
Beginning their journeys
More than 300 Logistics Management and Modern Materials Handling readers provided input for the online survey, which was largely focused on the current state of robotics automation adoption and use cases.
Many companies are just beginning their warehouse robotics journeys, according to the survey. In fact, we found that 40.4% have yet to install any robotic automation systems or services. About 34% of respondents consider themselves “potential buyers” or “current users” of these solutions, while 15.2% provide robotic automation consulting and systems integration services and 7.3% sell robotic automation systems or services.
Currently, 37% of companies are using large-scale intralogistics automation (e.g., conveyors, sortation, storage/retrieval, or shuttle systems) in their operations, and 23.1% are using robots in their plants or warehouses. Just over half of the responding organizations (52.8%) are not using this type of equipment, but 21.3% plan to put it to use within the next three years.
Planning ahead
Of the survey respondents who plan to use robots, but don’t currently have them in place, 38% of respondents are in the education and knowledge gathering stage; 22% are in the strategy and vision formulation stage; and 12% plan to roll out additional robots based on previous, successful tests. Other respondents are conducting an impact analysis (8%), documenting requirements (4%), piloting (2%), or already implementing robots in the live production environment (2%).
The companies that are implementing robotics and automation are focused on increasing flow and throughput, better managing the labor crisis, improving current labor productivity, reducing labor costs, improving workplace safety, reducing injuries and improving order accuracy and quality.
When selecting and implementing advanced robotics automation to fulfill those needs, most companies turn to material handling suppliers, robotics vendors, industry peers or systems integrators for help.
According to respondents who are planning to implement robotics automation, their top priorities for using such technology include picking (42.9%), goods receiving and unloading (42.9%), and sorting (37.5%). About 43% of companies are considering AMR pallet movement equipment while 34% want Around 28% of respondents want to incorporate heavy payload forked/tugger transport robots into their operations, while 24.5% and 22.6% want sortation robots or stationary industrial robots, respectively.
ROI is priority
When choosing a robotics solution, 48% of companies say ROI is extremely important to their decision-making, while 40% see payback time as extremely important, and 38% point to the total cost of ownership as a key aspect of their decision-making process. Additionally, 28% consider time to value when choosing a solution, and 26% consider investment risk extremely important.
Nearly half of the survey respondents who are planning to use robotics would prefer to buy the entire robotic solution (i.e., a pure Capex investment); 24% say they would rather use the RaaS option, and 22% say they would prefer to buy the robot hardware but subscribe to the software via a hybrid approach.
When investing in robotics solutions, more than half of respondents (53.8%) say payback is an “extremely important” factor in the decision, while an equal number consider the return on investment (ROI) when making these decisions. Others point to time to value (38.5%), the total cost of ownership (38.5%), and investment risk (30.8%) as some of the most important considerations when investing in robotics and automation.
Robots are living up to expectations in the real-world applications where they’re being put to work. Asked whether their existing robotics installations lived up to early expectations, over 60% of companies say their total cost-of-ownership objectives were either met or exceeded.
Nearly 85% of respondents say that the projected ROI either met or exceeded their expectations, and almost 77% say the same about their payback time objectives.
