Brightpick yesterday announced strong global sales growth for its Autopicker robots, which debuted in February. The privately held company said it has ramped up operations to fill the demand, and it is now manufacturing hundreds of robots annually for installations around the world at its plant in Europe.
“Demand for Brightpick Autopicker has far exceeded our expectations,” said Jan Zizka, co-founder and CEO of Brightpick, in a release.
“E-commerce and e-grocery companies seem to quickly understand the operational enhancements that a fleet of Brightpick Autopicker robots can provide,” he said. “Our strongest traction is in grocery and pharmaceuticals, probably because our robots excel at picking those items and can pick from ambient and chilled zones.”
Brightpick automates fulfillment processes
Erlanger, Ky.-based Brightpick offers robots using artificial intelligence to automate fulfillment processes including order picking, consolidation, dispatch, and stock replenishment. It claimed that its systems take weeks to deploy and enable warehouses to reallocate staffers dedicated to picking by 95% and to cut picking costs by half.
Brightpick Autopicker is an autonomous mobile robot (AMR) that moves around the warehouse, retrieves product storage totes from shelving, and robotically picks items from those totes to consolidate orders directly in the aisles.
In contrast to other automated fulfillment systems, Brightpick said Autopicker’s in-aisle robotic picking capabilities eliminate the need to travel back and forth to centralized picking stations. The AMRs can also be used for goods-to-person picking, stock replenishment, pallet picking, and dynamic slotting, the company said.
Autopickers to replenish pharmacies
Brightpick also announced its first Autopicker installation for the pharmaceutical industry. One of the largest European pharmaceutical companies in Europe will use the robots in its distribution center, said Brightpick.
The chain, which has thousands of pharmacies across multiple countries, will use Brightpick Autopicker to pick orders and regularly replenish its pharmacies. The robots are scheduled to go live next month.
If required, Brightpick Autopickers can easily determine and pick pharmaceutical items that expire the soonest or quickly stop picking from any batch if, for example, it is found to be defective.
Pharmaceuticals are only one application of Autopicke, noted Brightpick. The AMRs can also reliably pick ambient and chilled groceries, packaged goods, cosmetics, electronics, medical devices, polybagged apparel, and more.
Rohlik goes live with Munich deployment
In June, Brightpick announced the successful completion of a nine-month pilot of its robotic solution in the Prague fulfillment center of Rohlik Group. The company has more than 1.5 million e-grocery customers and 12 million orders per year.
Since then, Rohlik has deployed Brightpick's robots in its Munich fulfillment center and plans to continue rolling out AMRs in Frankfurt, Vienna, Prague, and facilities into 2024. Rohlik's system includes Brightpick Autopicker and Dispatcher robots, enabling it to fully automate picking, consolidation, and dispatch of orders.
Brightpick added that major grocery companies, third-party logistics providers (3PLs), and medical distributors in the U.S. and Europe have planned several other pilots. As companies refrain from investing in building new warehouses in the current economic climate, Brightpick said its robots can be installed quickly and without disruption to existing facilities to maximize productivity.
Brightpick Technology Hub continues work
At the Brightpick Technology Hub, the company said its development team is working long hours to continually enhance all of its robots and the Brightpick Intuition software, the “brains” of the robots. The team has focused on incremental improvements to its fleet management software, which already uses complex “time-space planning” to optimize the speed and throughput of the entire fleet.
“The commercial success of Brightpick Autopicker has been extremely motivating for our technology team that worked tirelessly to get it just right for our customers,” said Tomas Kovacovsky, co-founder and chief technology officer of Brightpick. “We are more dedicated than ever to keep enhancing the robots and software based on customer feedback and our own creative ideas.”
The company is part of Photoneo Brightpick Group, which has more has more than 300 employees and 5,000 technology installations across the U.S., Europe, and Asia.
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