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Brightpick this week said it is expanding its deployment with Dr. Max Group, a European pharmacy chain. Following successful operations and progressive scaling at Dr. Max’s Prague distribution center, Brightpick plans to deploy an additional 44 Autopicker robots across other facilities in the Czech Republic and Slovakia.
With the expansion, Dr. Max Group will reach a total of 74 deployed autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) from the Austin, Texas-based company.
“Expanding our partnership with Dr. Max Group across three major distribution centers is a tremendous validation for us of the reliability and added value of our technology,” said Jan Zizka, co-founder and CEO of Brightpick. “Pharmaceutical logistics demands uncompromising accuracy, speed, and strict adherence to standards. Our solution can effectively handle high-volume replenishment for hospitals and pharmacies as well as a dynamic e-commerce environment with high demands on dispatch speed.”
Brightpick also offers Gridpicker, a system that runs atop high-density automated storage and retrieval systems (ASRS) and is designed for maximum picking throughput.
Brightpick builds Autopicker to scale
The collaboration kicked off in late 2023 with an initial deployment of nine Autopicker AMRs at a Prague warehouse of Viapharma, Dr. Max’s sister company responsible for pharmacy and hospital logistics. Driven by its operational results, that fleet gradually expanded to its current 30 Autopicker robots.
Brightpick’s Autopicker is a multi-purpose autonomous system equipped with patented physical AI technology and advanced 3D vision. The mobile manipulator picks and consolidates orders directly in warehouse aisles.
Autopicker is fully scalable without requiring structural modifications to warehouse space and allows for flexible responses to seasonal peaks, according to Brightpick.
Thanks to fully autonomous picking, the Viapharma warehouse can process up to 20,000 items daily with minimal need for human intervention. This enabled a 95% reduction in manual picking labor, a 40% increase in warehouse capacity, and the practical elimination of picking errors, Brightpick said.
Dr. Max Group plans to expand robotic picking
“Deploying Brightpick technology enabled us to fundamentally increase picking accuracy and optimize warehouse processes,” said Rudolf Zurek, logistics director at Viapharma. “As a result, we were able to move human workers from physically demanding picking to more skilled activities, particularly quality control.”
“The system’s scalability and the smooth capacity expansion in Prague were key reasons why we decided to implement Autopicker robots in our other key hubs as well,” he said
Building on this success, Brightpick plans to complete two new projects in the Czech Republic and Slovakia in the second half of this year:
- Viapharma Ostrava: 22 Autopicker robots will automate the process of stock replenishment and medicine picking for pharmacies and hospitals in an identical setup to Prague.
- Dr. Max Bratislava: 22 Autopicker robots will take on a key role in processing and picking rapidly growing volumes of online orders.
Dr. Max Group has also worked with Geekplus Technologies on a tote-to-person system in Italy.