Berkshire Grey launches AI-powered robotic e-commerce sortation product

AI-enabled robotic solutions provider Berkshire Grey Inc has announced the launch of its AI-powered Robotic Shuttle Put Wall (RSPW) solution for e-commerce order fulfilment.

The RSPW is an automated put wall that increases capacity and throughput with robotic automation, which is more important than ever given today’s heightened customer expectations for fast and efficient fulfilment and the parallel industry pressure of labour scarcity.

“Businesses will continue to see eCommerce orders rise as global eCommerce sales expect to approach US$5 trillion by the end of 2021,” said Kevin Prouty, Analyst at IDC. “This growth in volume combined with labour scarcity is putting tremendous pressure on supply chain operations to increase fulfilment throughput and support a broad selection of products. Businesses have no choice but to automate.”

Berkshire Grey’s RSPW solution enables retailers to be more competitive, increase capacity, and meet escalating consumer demand despite labor shortages.

The RSPW solution can accommodate up to nearly 100% of typical SKU assortments, including challenging items such as soft polybags and cylinders/tubes, like those used for make-up, for a variety of industries including apparel, footwear, beauty, and general merchandise. In addition, it can help to increase customer order sortation throughput by up to 300% with the solution’s high-capacity put wall. Importantly, it can integrate with existing fulfilment processes with no disruption to ongoing operations.

The RSPW provide sort locations for up to 240 orders to be processed at the same time in a single robotic put wall as opposed to the industry average of 80 orders for a manual put wall. It can additionally improve upstream batch inventory pick rates by up to 33%.

Overall, it provides maximum flexibility by integrating with any existing operation including robotic, conveyer, and manual-based transport approaches.

“E-commerce continues to grow and surge,” commented Tom Wagner, Founder and CEO at Berkshire Grey. “Our automation enables retailers to increase capacity to meet the growing demand and helps to deliver efficient revenue growth. Berkshire Grey’s AI-enabled Robotic Shuttle Put Wall is built on proven technology deployed by customers today. This new platform increases order processing speeds, optimizes the fulfilment workforce, and most importantly gets more orders out the door more quickly.”