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In the past year, Attabotics Inc. has seen a lot of changes. In July 2025, the company laid off most of its staff and filed for bankruptcy. Nearly eight months later, the company announced it had found a new life with LaFayette Systems, material handling automation developer.
Now the company still provides its automated storage and retrieval systems (ASRS) with the backing of a full-solution provider in LaFayette.
Mark Dickinson is the senior vice president and general manager at Lafayette Systems and the former vice president of operations at Attabotics. Dickinson shared insights with Automated Warehouse into the revamped company’s strategy, what he’s seeing in the market, and how the transition has changed Attabotics.
“Attabotics’ technology is available. It’s there,” Dickinson said. “We’re not the same organization that we were before, but the tech is still there.”
What’s driving automation adoption?
Dickinson said Attabotics uses an acronym to describe why companies turn to automation. They’re looking for space, accuracy, labor, and throughput, or SALT.
“Usually, the reason we do a project is at least one, if not more, of those,” Dickinson said.
Space utilization has become a bigger concern as micro-fulfillment centers (MFCs) have become more popular. With smaller warehouses, every inch of space becomes more important.
“From a space-utilization perspective, it becomes very impactful when you can use the cubic space within the facility to be able to service as much of those products to those customers as possible,” Dickinson said.
Labor is also a major challenge. Dickinson said there are a couple of factors driving labor shortages.
“One is just inflation in the general economy,” he noted. “Two is labor availability, and that’s something that we see a lot, especially as you start to build more of these smaller distribution centers. More, smaller facilities mean you need more people to run them.”
In addition, when it comes to throughput, automation can greatly increase the number of units per hour an operator can pick. Where an operator could pick up to 150 units per hour, with automation, this can increase to anywhere from 300 units per hour, per person to 1,800 units, said Dickinson.
“We’re able to really create efficiencies not only around picking, but then also consolidate other functions into that process as a whole, if we get the opportunity to look at the end-to-end kind of operational stream,” he said.
Micro-fulfillment centers ‘never really left’
Many of these drivers center around the rise of micro-fulfillment centers. While they have become a point of debate within the industry, MFCs never really left, said Dickinson.
“Early adopters of automation are looking to put smaller distribution centers closer to where the people are ordering from,” he said.
However, there are still challenges that come with micro-fulfillment centers. “One of the things we tend to hear a lot is that they’re calling it quicksand, and it goes towards the system’s implementation,” Dickinson said.
“You have this concept where it was, I just need to put stuff closer to people so that I can get it to them in shorter periods of time, and not pay shipping, but nobody ever thought through the logistics of that,” he continued.
Working with automation providers who do understand MFCs can help end users to avoid common pitfalls.
“The biggest message I would have there is you have to talk to somebody who understands solutioning and understands the total end-to-end,” Dickinson said. “It starts before we even put stuff in the building. It’s how are we getting orders, how are we aggregating orders, how are we deciding what orders are getting fulfilled? How do we make sure that what’s being ordered is in the right place in the right time, so that we can then perform the operation to get it out?”
Attabotics is using AI to make servicing more efficient
In everyday operations, Attabotics’ technology gathers massive amounts of data about orders, operators, and the system as a whole. Dickinson said turning this data into usable information is at the crux of what the industry is trying to figure out when it comes to AI.
“One of the big things that we’re looking at is, these machines have difference cycles and different nuances,” Dickinson said. Attabotics is trying to understand what information from the robot matters and how the company can use that information to predict servicing.
Instead of having mechanical systems that call for servicing at regular intervals, Attabotics wants to create intelligent systems that actively diagnose the health of the system. This would help to cut down on unnecessary servicing.
“We create all this telemetry; we’re using it to understand what we need to look at in terms of maintenance,” Dickinson said. “We can, in real time, now see which robots are operating against the tolerance or outside the tolerance and create a proactive message to be sent to the maintenance technicians.”
With LaFayette, Attabotics is becoming a total solution provider
LaFayette, Dickinson said, encompasses conveyor controls, case handling, unit picking, palletization, and more. This opens new doors for Attabotics.
“As we go through the solution development, if there’s anything specific that we need that’s not off the shelf from an OEM, we can make it,” said Dickinson. “We really provide the customer, effectively, a one-stop shop to be able to provide a solution, and what that means to the customers is a reduction in risk. Instead of the customer having to go buy from a controls company and an ASRS company; all of that comes out of one place now.”
With the acquisition, Attabotics has changed the way it approaches deploying automation.
“One big thing we’ve understood is that we really need to meet the customer where they are. So, instead of the Attabotics technology being the solution, now the Attabotics technology is a portion of the solution,” Dickinson said. “When you look at the order orchestration in the warehouse and the execution of all of this, all the orders inside the facility, Attabotics now supports that rather than attempts to be the be all end all.”
With this change, Attabotics is expanding its relationships with distribution providers and integrators.
“Instead of being a black-box solution, now we’re really looking at the integrators and leveraging their capabilities. From an interface perspective, an integrator is fantastic,” Dickinson said. “They know the end user; they’ve got the relationship; they’re going to do a whole bunch of work inside the building.”