LAPP USA creates products used worldwide in automotive plants, machine tools, instrumentation, medical electronics, telecommunications, robotics, industrial automation, transportation, general industrial control systems, and many more applications. Earlier this year, the company consolidated operations into its 134,000-sq.-ft. facility in Brownsburg, Ind., but it found that keeping up with inventory became a daily struggle.
At LAPP’s facility, the inventory process was labor-intensive, time-consuming, and affected customer service. According to the company, some key challenges included:
- Limited coverage – Manual cycle counts only covered the warehouse twice per year
- High labor demand – 12.5% of the workforce is dedicated to inventory counts, pulling staff from picking and manufacturing
- Inconsistencies – Misplaced or mislabeled reels required extra searching and reconciliation
- Customer impact – These inefficiencies slowed down order processing and made it harder to ensure on-time deliveries
Inside the Corvus system
To better tackle its inventory needs, LAPP turned to Corvus Robotics, which provides an autonomous inventory management system, called Corvus One, that runs on warehouse drones. The Mountain View, Calif.-based company deploys fully autonomous drones built in the U.S. and offers them via a robotics-as-a-service (RaaS) model.
The company said it built Corvus One for real-world warehouses. It features embodied AI that enables autonomous operations in GPS-denied environments. The system’s computer vision detects barcodes, labels, and rack positions at scale. Meanwhile, its machine learning improves scan accuracy and identifies discrepancies over time, the company claimed.
With LAPP, Corvus One flies nightly missions, scanning racks and capturing images of pallet locations. By morning, the inventory team has a complete, accurate report that flags discrepancies like misplaced or mislabeled reels.
This automated workflow has replaced a manual, time-consuming cycle counting process with a streamlined inventory monitoring system that lowers labor costs while improving accuracy and operational efficiency.
Corvus One’s embodied AI allows it to perceive, navigate, and scan LAPP’s warehouse without manual oversight. With nightly reports and location images from Corvus One, LAPP can spot and fix issues before they impede fulfillment.
LAPP sees labor savings and accuracy improvements
LAPP USA said Corvus One turned a labor-intensive, error-prone process into a nightly automated workflow that provides reliable visibility, reduces costs, and improves customer service.
“Getting the inventory in, in real-time, seeing where it is, and being able to allocate it right away to the customer is a tremendous benefit for us,” said Jason Beltran, facility manager at LAPP.
Improvements included:
- 13 times more coverage – Inventory counts increased from two per year to 26 per year, helping LAPP more quickly detect errors that could affect shipments.
- 60% labor savings – LAPP reduced inventory staff to two associates, so it could redeploy staffers to support picking and manufacturing, directly speeding up order fulfillment.
- Zero overtime – Corvus One eliminated weekend cycle counting, allowing teams to focus on weekday operations and on-time customer deliveries.
- Higher accuracy – Automated discrepancy reports highlight mislabeled, misplaced, or missing reels for quick resolution, preventing errors from reaching customers.
- Improved standard operating procedures (SOPs) – Drone scans exposed label placement inconsistencies, helping LAPP standardize practices and improve accuracy across the warehouse.