How to Quickly Fulfill Peak Season Orders with Warehouse Robots

It’s that time of year again – no, I’m not talking about not pumpkin spice latte season, although it is also that. Peak season is ramping up as shoppers start to buy gifts for the holidays, and warehousing managers like you are bracing for an uptick in order volumes. According to market research firm, Insider Intelligence, holiday season retail sales are expected to grow 4.5% YoY to $1.328 trillion for the 2023 season, with retail ecommerce expected to make up 19.6% of those sales. 

If you haven’t planned for peak yet, it’s time to do so now. During this busy period, fast and accurate order processing is essential to keep your customers happy (no one wants to be the reason gifts didn’t arrive on time!) and maintain your brand reputation, while still controlling costs. 

This year, be ready to take on peak season, and year-round orders, in your warehouse with new coworkers for your human associates in the form of robots. Autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) give your facility the flexibility and efficiency that you need to thrive and survive when order volumes surge.

AMRs work alongside humans, and optimize human worker productivity so your warehouse can operate at maximum efficiency during the peaks and valleys of order volumes. By reducing unproductive walking time (sometimes up to 15 miles a day in a warehouse) for humans, the robots let your associates focus on value-added tasks like picking the correct item, packing and shipping the right item, and quality assurance (QA) checks. The AMRs handle the tedious and repetitive transport and travel between pick locations and staging areas.

The bots work smoothly alongside people, autonomously moving around your facility, even on mezzanines and pick towers, using built-in visual sensors and navigation software. Easy to implement, they integrate with your existing warehouse management system and processes in just weeks without workflow disruption. There’s no need to undertake lengthy integration projects right before your peak season crunch.

Get the Number of Robots that You Need — When You Need Them

Labor shortages continue to plague many warehouses, making it tough to hire and retain the right number of associates to handle peak. With AMRs and our robots-as-a-service (RaaS) subscription model, you can supplement your current workforce with as many (or as few) robots as you require to meet seasonal demands. Then easily scale back down after the peak is over.

Send the Right Orders Out the First Time

Having robots in your warehouse leads to strong improvements in productivity and order accuracy. For example, our AMRs have enabled 200-300% productivity gains for our customers.

During stressful peak times when both order volumes and customer expectations are high, you can’t afford any errors, but that’s when human errors are most likely to occur. Add AMRs with display screens and scanners to your human associates’ picking process to substantially reduce picking errors, so, for example, Timmy doesn’t wind up with a blue truck when he wanted a red truck.

Our customers see their order accuracy jump to 99.9% using LocusBots. This precision and efficiency helps you ship the right orders on time the first time, preventing costly delays and replacements.

Fast, Simple Training

With tight labor markets, many warehouses end up hiring seasonal associates to help out over peak periods. The challenge is getting these temporary workers up to speed quickly on how to work efficiently and safely.

There’s no need to pull your existing staff away from critical fulfillment tasks to run lengthy training sessions. AMRs like LocusBots help you to streamline the training time for new associates to just 15 minutes instead of days or even a week. Our simple, intuitive display interfaces and controls get temporary associates picking right away.

Warehouse managers strive all year to deliver excellent service to customers and that’s especially important during busy peak seasons. With the quick deployment, flexible scaling, improved training time, and optimized efficiency of Locus Robotics’ AMRs, you’ll be ready to take on this year’s holiday order surge without hiccups. 

Talk to us to prepare your warehouse for peak success.