Robotic Warehouse Sortation Systems

Sortation systems can complete both primary sort processes, from receiving to decanting into bins or totes, and secondary sort processes for customer orders. The high-level purpose of sortation is to get the right package to the right place. To do so, there are multiple types of sortation available.

• Conveyance Sortation: Diverts cases from a centralized conveyance system to different destinations such as gaylords, packing stations, or other process lines.
• Put Walls: Consolidate multiple items into a single container or divide a bulk batch of the same SKUs into multiple containers, often from a batch pick.
• ASRS Sortation: High-density systems that store and sort products using a variety of methods, such as vertical or horizontal carousels, robotic shuttles, or cuboidal hives filled with smart robots. 
• Robotic Sortation: Highly flexible and scalable systems utilizing robotic arms to receive, scan, sort, and stow products for processing or consolidation. 
• AMR/AGV: Utilizes autonomous vehicles, often located in a dedicated field, to sort pallets or pods of product for storage and retrieval. Good for heavy, single-SKU products located on pallets or SKUs sorted across many different locations. While often also called robotic sortation, this method's use of high conveyance and vehicles versus robotic arms distinguishes the two.

Robotic sortation provides many benefits for warehouses and ecommerce order fulfillment centers because it makes large-scale, complex tasks simpler to manage and faster to complete. Robotic sorting improves order fulfillment accuracy and speed by reducing error and improving efficiency. Sorting items in a warehouse or fulfillment center is repetitive, and mistakes can be costly. Employees can only sort one item at a time, using significantly more effort to pick up each item from the conveyor belt than robotic sorts do. In addition, labor shortages in ecommerce fulfillment have strained large centers sorting tens of thousands of orders per day. Beyond the labor considerations, robotic sorting also gives your warehouse these additional advantages.

• Ability to manipulate a wide variety of items — Options for dynamic dimensioning, positioning, barcode reading, scan-in-flight
• Flexibility to sort to conveyance, gaylords, pack-out
• Lower fixed infrastructure requirements
• Simple scalability by duplicating robotic “work cells” — Easy to scale systems or add additional cells, as rate/throughput requirements increase 
• Can easily be reprogrammed or repurposed to process new items or perform different sortation processes
• Utilize commercially available and highly reliable key components

Companies should evaluate multiple factors for robotic sorts to be effective in warehouses and distribution centers. 

Warehouse:

Know the volume, space, and ergonomics of your operation. You will need space to install a sortation system in an area with enough operating room for the robotic arm(s) and conveyor belts. There should also be enough room to install carts or output bins. You also need to have space to operate within space constraints designed for your current human ergonomics.

Product:

Know the volume of items, parts, or products to sort and how it will scale over time.

Technology:

Work with an experienced integrator to plan an end-to-end automation solution that includes the necessary technology for success. You need to create a collaborative system for both robots and human operators to interact.

Robotic sortation is the right solution for you if: 

• You have a wide variety of product types and sizes to sort
• You are coupling sortation with other processes such as pack-out, labeling, consolidating, or stowing
• You need to interface with existing ASRS, conveyance, AMRs, or put walls
• You need a sortation system that meets existing demand but can be easily scaled as future demand increases

JR Automation’s extensive experience in ecommerce and logistics fulfillment can help you select the optimal system to meet your specific needs. Our production-proven robotic sortation platforms can reliably sort a wide range of products while interfacing with conveyance, put walls, AMR/AGVs, or other inbound/outbound systems. One example of customization is our specially designed RFSS Robotic Sortation System. The RFSS is a compact, modular sorter capable of handling items of any shape — making it the perfect logistics solution for any industry. Furthermore, our systems are highly scalable, designed to fulfill your current needs and seamlessly scale as future demand increases.