"To learn more about supply chain robotics and warehouse automation, check out this virtual demo of our AI robots: • Demo of AI warehouse robots (fully au...
The Feed, the largest ecommerce retailer for endurance athletes, recently installed autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) to fully automate its supply chain and logistics. A large fleet of Brightpick Autopicker robots autonomously pick orders and replenish inventory.
The award-winning Brightpick Autopicker is the only AMR in the world that robotically picks and consolidates orders directly in the warehouse aisles, like a humanoid. Brightpick Autopicker is powered by proprietary 3D machine vision and artificial intelligence (AI), which have been trained on more than a billion picks to date and use machine learning to improve with each pick.
The installation also includes two Goods to Person picking stations for heavy or hard-to-pick items. Mobile robots automatically transport those items to the Goods to Person stations, where humans complete the picks.
In addition, The Feed’s setup features two pallet picking stations, where workers pick directly from cases or pallets and place those items onto the order totes carried by the robots, similar to pick-assist or directed picking AMRs (such as Locus Robotics).
Beyond picking orders, the AMRs also buffer picked orders inside the system and replenish new inventory. The end-to-end automation has streamlined The Feed’s entire supply chain and logistics operation by reducing labor needs by 80%.
The AMRs work with standard shelving and totes, enabling fast deployment and end-to-end supply chain automation in any warehouse, including existing operations and mezzanines. Unlike other fulfillment automation solutions such as shuttle systems (e.g. Knapp) or cube ASRS (e.g. Autostore), Brightpick robots do not need any fixed infrastructure, grids or conveyors to operate. As such, the AI robots serve as an attractive Locus Robotics, Knapp and Autostore alternative."
The Feed, the e-commerce leader for endurance athletes, has transformed its logistics with
BrightPix AI robots, all thanks to a powerful fleet of BrightPix auto pickers.
We were operating out of a roughly 35,000 square foot facility, surely human picking,
and we realized that we would just have to be moving into hundreds and hundreds of people a
shift to do the picks. We have roughly about 50,000 picks a day that we need to do,
and what was unique about our business is it's not really a long tail of product business,
where 10% of the products make up 80% of the revenue. We're almost the opposite,
it's a very flat curve. Of all our 6,000 products, we touch pretty much every one every day,
so we needed a more dynamic model that we could direct picking operations to any one product at
any one time, because if one's buried at the bottom of the stack, that order is being held
up for the product to get out the door. So BrightPix really came out very quickly as the
only one that had the capabilities that fit so perfectly with our type of products. We realized
it was the perfect combination of we could get density, we could get speed, and we really could
focus where our costs were, which is on automating the picking. What makes this installation especially
unique is its breadth and versatility. With one type of robot, we were able to automate many
processes in addition to just storage and retrieval. We implemented in-house robotic
picking, which significantly increases labor savings and speeds up order picking. We also
integrated goods-to-person stations for items that aren't ideal for robotic picking or that are best
picked in batches. For fast-moving products, we integrated a brand new feature called pallet
picking, where human operators are able to pick items directly out of cases or pallets and place
those items onto the auto picker, which eliminates the need to decant and put away those items.
We also integrated kitting and bundling stations, and finally, we added an order buffer into our
system, which enables our auto pickers to continue picking and buffering orders overnight so that
those orders are ready to be packed and shipped the moment the morning shift comes in. All this
is part of one integrated seamless solution managed by our BrightPix Intuition software.
When we looked at BrightPix, we wanted a solution that really solved our picking problem.
And we had questions, could the robots pick our products? So we sent our top 500 products out,
and we came back at a 90% robot pickable rate, and that's only improved from there. And that
really gave us confidence that this solution would work. We needed a turnkey partner. We have a small
team. We only have three people on our development side, and we have a completely homegrown ERP WMS.
So we needed to have all our resource focused on the integration aspects and have BrightPix work
as really a black box solution where we could pass orders, pass products, and out came finished
orders on the other side. And that's what we got. We were able to go from 50 to 100 people to
completely automated with the BrightPix solution. Now we had homes for all the people that were
already working here, so we didn't have to remove any staff because the business was growing fast
enough, but we really could almost stop hiring. Like when the employees said, wait, we don't have
to do all this walking anymore, and we don't need to go pick this stuff, and now we can focus on
finishing orders properly, doing the transfer from the BrightPix system to our automated packaging
solution. They were thrilled. Working with the robots is a lot different than our old location.
At our old warehouse, we had to walk around with a box and manually pick everything, and sometimes
the boxes were empty, and we'd have to go find things. So now it's much more automated. We don't
obviously have to do that anymore. The robots do all the picking for us, and we can just focus on
packing and getting the product out the door. We're really focused on what our contribution
margin is as a business, and getting our cost per order down was critical. We think of the
BrightPix system, and we do it as a robot, as a service system, as part of our labor line item.
So we don't actually consider technology. We consider it labor, and we've got roughly day one,
a two-to-one arbitrage. So we cut our labor costs to BrightPix by 50%, and now we're getting close
to a three-to-one arbitrage cost. One of the things that's also been a real savings is we're
now picking a lot of our orders and storing them in the system overnight. So we can run a much
lower overnight staffing, and overnight staffing generally is at a premium for us. So now we can
run that with fewer staff and start the early shift at 6 a.m. with all the orders queued up
and ready to go, so we have maximum staff utilization throughout the day.
