French company builds shelf-climbing robots to improve efficiency
They wanted to do better than Amazon, and thanks to the pandemic, became the first French company to do so.
Exotec builds shelf-climbing robots near Lille, to make warehouses more efficient and less cumbersome.
These autonomous robots, created by French company Exotec, are designed to help warehouse staff pick items from shelves up to 12 metres high. While there are other robots working in warehouses across the globe, what makes these different is that they move vertically.
Commenting on this, Romain Moulin, co-founder and president of Exotec stated, "Exotec is a manufacturer of robotic systems for picking warehouses, so typically one of our customers is CDiscount. If you place an order with CDiscount, it used to be people in a warehouse trying to find the phone and the phone cover that you ordered, who could travel up to 15 km a day in huge warehouses."
Romain Moulin added, "Exotec's idea was to put a fleet of robots at the service of the operator, to say to the operator +stay out of the stock, a robot will go and get the items you need and bring them back. This allows the operators to work faster, to have more ergonomic working positions. The particularity of Exotec remains the robot that we call a "skypod", so there you have the production line of these machines behind you. And this particular robot is able to climb onto racks up to 12 metres high in order to pick up items and take them down."
"When they climb in the rack, they go at 1.5 metres per second, so this is a very fast piece of equipment," says Gilles Baulard, Exotec's executive vice president of sales.
Baulard says that being able to collect items from these heights means a warehouse needs less space to fulfil its orders.
This particular warehouse is operated by Monoprix, one of France's largest retailers, processing 45 million sales each year. Exotec's system is designed to easily adapt to peak times, like the holidays. When sales are high, it's a matter of just calling in reinforcements.
"They doubled their fleet of robots to face the surge of throughput during that season," explains Baulard. "Putting (in) more robots is a bit like hiring new temporary employees."
Partnering with brands like Gap in the US and Uniqlo in Japan, Exotec's system currently operates in 24 facilities, with 17 others being installed worldwide. So, if you like your gifts this year, thank Santa, but maybe also Pahe, Mozu and Goku for making sure they were delivered in time for the holidays.
