Global Freight Management

Results

3PL improves picking time with LocusBots

Locus deployed a warehouse execution platform and 16 autonomous mobile robots along with a suite of dashboards and actionable reporting tools for Global Freight Management. 

With the bots, associates now walk along the warehouse without any stress, strain, or accidents. They no longer have to push or pull heavy trolleys and don’t waste time going back and forth between the offload and the picking location. Instead, the bots do the walking and carrying. 

Productivity has improved with the bots, as well as the time to fulfill orders. “If we had 1,000 internet orders come in two years ago, we would have needed a lot of people and it would have taken a few days,” said Will. “Now, with Locus, we have 1,000 orders come in and we easily fulfill those orders in less than a day with the same amount of people.” 

The same amount of associates combined with bots were even able to handle the Christmas demands for toys and airplane sets. Before Locus, the 3PL hired and had to train many new associates to handle the peak season. With Locus, the associates handled the increase in orders with ease, and any new associates were trained on the bots in just 10 minutes. 

Associates, managers, and executives alike are thrilled with the bots. The managers and associates are able to view real-time metrics and pick maps and make decisions based on that information, while leadership gains visibility on the flow of the facility. 

Global Freight Management has some SKUs of bigger products that don’t fit on the bots. To fulfill those orders without trolleys, they’re looking at adding on the higher capacity LocusBots of Vector or Max. As the business grows and more and more business goes to smaller orders, Will can only see increasing their current number of Locus Origin bots.