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Part 1 of this two-part series takes a look at the increasing use of robotics systems to "man" the supply chain, along with some of the benefits and challenges this operational shift entails.
Recent developments in robotics are promising to reshape supply chain fundamentals. Specifically, robotic devices are improving warehouse operations to a degree unforeseen only a short while ago, by automating a slew of repetitive, difficult and usually monotonous tasks.
Applying this technology to jobs once performed or overseen by humans also delivers significant savings in labor, energy costs and related expenses.
One only has to look as far as Zappos' implementation of
Kiva Systems robotics technology in its own warehouse operations to appreciate the
savings such as an investment can deliver: Zappos increased its order
cycle time by a factor of 4, according to Mitch Rosenberg, VP of
marketing 
for Kiva.
Breakthrough or Stepping Stone?
The Kiva robots represent a major breakthrough for the supply chain in the last few years, said Pat Penfield, assistant professor of supply chain management in the Whitman School of Management at Syracuse University.
"A lot of Fortune 500 firms are using AGVs (automated guided vehicles), which is another form of automation, of course," he told the E-Commerce Times. Kiva, though, "has brought us to the point where a company can justify making an investment of this magnitude and see a payback in the next few years."
That is hardly a unanimous opinion, however. Robots have been in existence for several years -- and there are reasons why they have not been widely adopted in supply chain operations, said Amiya Chakravarty, a professor of supply chain, operations and technology at Northeastern University's College of Business Administration.
For starters, "robots are very expensive, and to make effective use of them, they have to be in specific areas or applications where there is a good match," Chakravarty told the E-Commerce Times.
They work best, he said, with discrete one-off tasks such as moving an object from point A to point B. "Any kind of use of automation is hard to make work when it must be interlinked in a system -- then it becomes difficult to coordinate."
Even for packing operations -- a relatively low-level function -- robots need to be augmented with human guidance, he said. "The industry has not gotten to the point where we can combine intelligence with robots in an effective way."
Ultimately, what Kiva has done is eliminate the need for humans to do a lot of walking and heavy lifting, Tom Bonkenburg, director of European operations for St. Onge Company, told the E-Commerce Times. "They've taken the easy stuff out of the equation, sure -- but what they haven't done is figure out how to get the robots to reach into the pallet to find just the right object needed and then take that object to another location."
Eventually, robots will get there, Bonkenburg predicted. "As computers get faster and smarter, you will see them get better at identifying and then placing specific objects."
Assessing What Is Popular
That point is closer than some might believe, at least based on Rosenberg's description of how the Kiva robots operate. In a typical warehouse setting in which the Kiva systems are deployed, the robots take the pallets during the receiving part of the operation and move them to the end of the warehouse to be kept in reserve until the merchandise is needed.
It would be basically brute automated force and nothing more but for this: The Kiva robots "are automatically, continuously measuring which items are most popular and moving them closer to the pick workers," Rosenberg said -- all without human intervention.
That raises a prickly issue -- jobs lost in favor of the deployment of robots -- that is bound to create controversy when their use takes off.
Who Loses?
Automation may not automatically translate into jobs lost.
"That is often the perception that exists when advanced technology is introduced into any business environment," Frost & Sullivan Senior Research Analyst Muthuraman Ramasamy told the E-Commerce Times.
Most, if not all, of the tasks that robots now perform still require human oversight -- and do not automate extensively enough to replace an entire job function, he said.
Still, with some implementations, either jobs will be lost or workers will be reassigned -- or, most likely, new hires will be postponed.
That's what happened when productivity increased in a local brewery due to advanced automation, noted Syracuse's Penfield. Anheuser Bush installed several AGVs that took over such tasks as loading pallets of beer onto trucks that would then move to a bottling station.
The brewery "said they would be able to defer hiring because of this equipment," Penfield recalled.
Of course, the alternative to that scenario would be to cease pushing for higher productivity through the use of advanced automation, of course -- essentially, to stall the march of progress.
"If we were a conveyor belt
manufacturer, no one would ask the question whether our product is
replacing jobs," Kiva's Rosenberg said.
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