Robotics and Automation in Logistics

Hi everyone,

          I am Aswith Krishna Asok pursuing MBA in Amrita School of Business,Coimbatore.Recently I came across an article about Robotics and Automation in Logistics and here are some of the insights that I gathered.

                       Nowadays,  many companies  are increasingly adopting robotics in order to speed up labor intensive tasks. Robots are ideal in the case of tasks which repeats  such as sorting, counting and for fetching and carrying  products in the warehouse.According  to International  federation  of Robotics, the demand for robots  as well as collaborative robots is expected to grow by 10% in 2020.

                       The warehouses are increasingly  automated.The British supermarket Ocado is using robots  in order to make online grocery shopping faster.In Ocado, robots organize the inventory and humans pack the bags. This facility  processes  3.5 million items a week and the company is selling  this technology  to others. But economists estimates that 17% of American jobs could be done by machines.

                      The primary  jobs done by robots are lifting, moving and sorting.These robots prove to be more efficient  and cheaper than humans.The robots are controlled by a central computer.The implementation  of robots and continuous upgrade of the technology  has helped Ocado in gaining a competitive advantage as compared to other competitors.These machines are scalable and modular. The size of operation can be increased  by increasing the number of crates and robots. Since the robots are interchangeable, the breakdown  of one does not affect the process since other  robots can do its job and this helps in achieving economies of scale.

                      In Ocado, humans are  employed at technological bottlenecks. Ocado is working on a solution  to handle day delicate or irregularly shaped items  by equipping the arm with a suction cap and by developing a soft robotic arm that uses rubber fingers filled  with pressurised air.Since the tasks involved  in logistics  are usually  routine, it is easy to automate.But due to automation, 14% of jobs in developed  countries  are at risk.