Page 33 - EngineerIT November 2022

TECHNOLOGY AND INNOVATION

OMRON improving order

picking with robots

ogether, shipping, receiving and storage count for less
than half of all warehousing activity costs. The lion’s share
Tof expenses- a whopping 55%- is bound in order picking.
Breaking down the various activities associated with order picking,
we find that over 60% of the time is spent walking, with writing,
searching and picking tasks compromising the other 40%.
Given the data, it’s safe to say that automating the “walking”
portion of an order picking operation will have a strong positive
impact on overall warehouse activity. OMRON Logistics strategic account
manager, Yaqing Sun, recently discussed some strategies for using autonomous
mobile robots (AMRs). The main downside of this method is that
Let’s unpack a few methods for replacing unnecessary walking time with AMRs. employees must still scan items manually, so
traceability isn’t fully automated.
Strategy #1: Transporting items to employees (“Goods to person”)
By having an AMR autonomously move goods to a warehouse associate, you can Strategy #3: Transporting items to
reduce the amount of time that associate spends walking, which in turn reduces a robot (“Goods to robot”)
fatigue and generally improves work satisfaction. In addition, it improves traceability This method has dual advantages of high
by automating the QR code scanning process. accuracy and low dependence on labour
Some potential downsides of this method include high up-front investment costs, a availability (making it a good option for
relatively long integration and/or installation time, and the likelihood of infrastructure companies struggling to hire personnel).
changes to the facility. Still, logistics facilities by and large find that the productivity Slight downsides include high investment
benefits heavily outweigh the initial costs of deployment. costs and the possibility of lower throughput
relative to manual picking.
Strategy #2: Transporting items between zones (“Person to goods”) Nonetheless, collaborative robotic
This strategy involves breaking up the warehouse into separate order picking zones, technology is advancing by leaps and bounds,
each of which will have a dedicated employee. Since a single order might involve and solutions that connect an autonomous
picking from more than one zone, an autonomous mobile robot will move between mobile robot with a cobot are going to just
the zones, stopping whenever an employee needs to retrieve a particular item. get more and more efficient. Furthermore,
Although each employee still must do some walking, having AMRs traverse the both AMRs and cobots can work around the
long distances between zones cuts down on the walking by a significant amount. clock with minimal downtime.

Word of the year or not, loadshedding shortages happen, businesses targeted by

cyber attacks have, in some circumstances,
is unlikely to affect cyber security taken advantage of the opportunity to
restore systems using their offline servers,
and avoid paying any ransoms.
He adds that the majority of software
he Pan South African Language Board, in collaboration with Focal Point, providers have more than enough backup
announced this week that the South African word of the year is – you guessed capacity to keep systems running through
Tit – load shedding. This comes as no surprise for a country that has been even extended power outages, and are
plagued by the dreaded rolling blackouts throughout 2022, even reaching level six. unlikely to be affected at all. “While there
According to Carlo Bolzonello, South Africa country lead for Trellix, a global leading are many bleak realities South African
cyber security infrastructure and intelligence organisation, one thing companies in businesses face due to load shedding,
South Africa can rely on is the continuation of their cyber security defences during organisations can at least rest assured that
blackouts. “Power outages can, in some cases, even prove to be beneficial, as when their cyber security systems will remain in
systems are offline, hackers are not able to use their cloud-based methodologies to place, protecting critical business data and
gain access to your business network.” Bolzonello goes on to explain that when power assets,” Bolzonello concludes.

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