I was recently asked what goes into designing robot-forward picking operations for a Brownfield warehouse. With experience, I believe I have developed a decent understanding of how to approach this exercise, so decided to put down some thoughts.
Brownfield warehouses present unique challenges because they require balancing ongoing shipping activities with the integration of new robotic solutions. My approach to designing a robotic solution revolves around three overarching categories:
- Facilities Assessment
- Operational Characteristics
- WMS Characteristics
Let’s delve into each category to gain a better understanding:
Facilities Assessment
This assessment is done through a site walk. During this walk, I am looking for specific parameters that will influence the deployment of robots. For example, one of the sites I visited was a warehouse with 4 blocks of buildings arranged together to make a warehouse and each block was at different elevations (at least 2 stairs up or down) making it harder for any type of robot to roam the entire picking area. Hence, I value site walks as an important step towards designing a solution.
During the visit, I am looking for
- Building Layout: A general understanding of the picking area
- Total picking area footprint
- Need to understand the complete picking area footprint.
- Width of the aisles
- This is an interesting one for P2G solutions, and many times often overlooked. If robots’ form factor doesn’t allow robots to come inside the aisles, I am adding time for pickers to walk and designers need to count for that.
- Aisle lengths
- Designing a P2G solution, helps me understand the breezeway and allows better path planning.
- If designing a G2P solution, the significance reduces as a solution will take over the entire picking area eventually.
- mezzanine height, if applicable
- current picking face design
- Is it picking from pallet, Case Shelving aka Flow rack, or Library Type Bin Shelving?
- the health of the concrete
- For P2G solutions, I am looking to see if any obvious concrete issues need repair.
- For G2P solutions, usually, professional concrete grading is usually done to understand the flatness of the floor.
- Electrical Drops
- Here I am looking to understand what type of power building has 480v VS 240/120 and 3 phase VS single phase power.
- I am also looking to understand the nearest main panel to see if I need to invest any additional cost for an electric run.
- Note – it is not significant in the grand scheme of the project, but capturing this beforehand shows a thorough understanding of warehousing operations.
- Wi-Fi Drops
- Current Wi-Fi setup & drops.
Pro-Tip – Just observe the operations for a good 30 minutes. Put on warehouse operations hat and observe the operations for a good amount of time to get a grasp on how things are running in the warehouse. You will uncover things the data cannot provide.
Operational Characteristics
This is the very first step most of us take to see the viability of robots in the warehouse. This is a data-driven category where I rely on operations and previous data to help me understand a warehouse’s operating characteristics. Below are a few specific operational characteristics I am trying to understand.
- UPO – Units per Order
- LPO – Lines per Order
- Size of the SKUs – Size of the SKU
- my categories are > regular Shoe box or <= regular Shoe Box
- Total #of SKUs
- Picker UPH
- I usually like to double-confirm this number.
- If the opportunity arises, I will work with operations during the site walk to do one complete picking task to match it against the UPH that was shared earlier.
- Business as Usual (BAU) Throughput (in units)
- (BAU) Operational Hours
- (BAU) Shift Schedules
- (BAU) Operational Days
- (BAU) #of pickers per day
- Peak Day Throughput (in units)
- Peak Operational Hours
- Peak Operational Days
- Peak Shift Schedules
- #of pickers per peak day
Once I have a handle on the current operation characteristics, I will plug those numbers in either the standard P2G or G2P calculator or any custom calculator provided by the vendor to understand the number of robots needed.
WMS Characteristics
Warehouse Management System helps me understand the
- Current picking strategy
- Cluster Picking, Wave Picking, or Zone Picking
- Current Picking method
- RF Gun based, paper-based, voice picking
- Type of WMS
- This helps me understand the integration capabilities available
- WMS Upgrade Cycle
- This is also an often overlooked question but a make-or-break parameter. If the WMS upgrade cycle intersects with the planned warehouse robotics project, there is a very high chance that the warehouse robotics project will go on the back burner. I know of at least two major enterprise robotics projects that went from the next big thing to we will look at it after the WMS upgrade.
If you are a warehouse operator, be prepared to answer these questions.
If you are a warehouse robotics company, if you haven’t been doing this, let this be a good reminder to start including these parameters in your initial analysis.
Integrating robots in the brownfield warehouse is an exercise but doing it right first time avoids doing it multiple times.
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