(Courtesy: Locus Robotics)
No doubt you have heard the phrase, “Necessity is the mother of invention.” And no doubt you understand the point of the quote is that difficult situations lead to ingenious solutions. Some have attributed the quote to Plato, who wrote in The Republic, “Necessity, who is the mother of invention.”
Regardless who first said it; the concept is what has been keeping the human race in a perpetual evolution.
One company that took the concept to heart is Quiet Logistics, a third-party provider of fulfillment services to major fashion and apparel companies headquartered in Wilmington, Massachusetts.
The company was one of the first in the logistics trade to use robots provided by Kiva. Kiva is the well-known robot manufacturer who revolutionized the warehouse business when it came up with robots that could pick orders from stock. Amazon, the giant e-commerce retailer, acquired Kiva in March 2012 to manufacture and supply robots to Amazon’s fulfillment centers worldwide. Some time later Amazon announced that it was taking Kiva off the market and that the company would no longer support its installed systems.
All of a sudden Quiet Logistics found itself in a bind. Who were they going to get to replace Kiva and supply it with a robot-based order picking system?
Company executives searched far and wide and asked some robot manufacturing companies to help. However, the companies did not have experience in the discipline of distribution. Moreover, the executives of Quiet Logistics figured that if they found a company, Amazon might buy it.
Moreover, the staff of Quiet Logistics noted that they had incorporated Kiva robots into their warehouse in 2009. So the company had knowledge about robots. During the years it learned the shortcomings of the Kiva System and had some ideas on how to improve it. For example, the Kiva robots were heavy, so people couldn’t work in the same area and, because of their weight, they couldn’t be run on a mezzanine.
Furthermore, if they wanted to add a robot, a representative from Kiva would have to come in and integrate it with Kiva’s proprietary software and the inventory data was stored in the robots. The data was not available to the company’s warehouse management system.
In addition, Kiva designed its system more than 10 years ago. Since then, many of the sensors have been improved and are less expensive.
So Quiet Logistics executives decided to create their own robot system. The plan was to develop robots that could work with the systems Quiet Logistics already had. The company wanted to be able to share assets and infrastructure between the system they had and the robots that were to be created.
Quiet Logistics purchased a $300 kit robot and began the project. Over time they hired a team that included some former Kiva employees and brought Olin College in Needham, Massachusetts, as well as design experts from California into the project.
Today Quiet Logistics has its system, which includes five working robots. All of the shortcomings of the Kiva System have been dealt with. The robots are light and can work with people. Adding a robot to the system is plug and play and is similar to adding a new barcode scanner or voice headset to an automatic identification system. Just turn on the robot and it adds itself to the system. The company’s warehouse management system stores the inventory data and assigns robots to jobs in the same manner it does with human employees.
Small, mobile robots carrying a tote picks orders for a single or multiple order from a packing station and goes to a picking location. There the robot turns on blinking lights on its base to alert a human order selector that an order is ready to be picked. All the details of the order appear on the robot’s iPad. The selector picks the product and scans it using a scanner underneath the iPad, drops it into the tote and the warehouse management system then directs the robot to the next task. The task could be to go to another pick station or if the order for that robot is complete, to a packing station. At the packing station a human packer unloads the tote and the robot receives its next assignment.
Called Locus, Quiet Logistics is now selling the system through a new company named Locus Robotics.