0:00
As we believe technology is going to play a huge factor in us providing a really reliable fulfillment network. So we’ve been looking at who else has had that passion and that mission with us. And we found a great company in Boston called 6 River Systems and they are experts in fulfillment greater technology have a lot of expertise in this.
0:20
So we acquired them last October and one of the cool things that I think we brought into the shop and film and network family is collaborative robotics which works within warehouses that really helps make warehouses a lot more advanced. So anyway really excited. Now we call these robots Chuck after the Boston or the Charles River in Boston as well.
0:41
So yeah, we’re really excited about these collaborative robots. What do you mean by collaborative robots. Can you break that down a bit. OK Well, maybe like, why don’t I just show you while I talk through it. So I’m just going to grab my phone and we have a little model here. So I mean, I’m actually going to put a check into my office
1:02
and walk you through what they look like and what they do and what problems are solving. So OK let me just move to that. OK So we’ve got Chuck here you can see what this robot looks like and the whole idea about collaborative is these are self-driving autonomous robots that zip around within warehouses and their jobs are to make it easier for associates to pick things and not have to walk the whole length of the actual warehouse.
1:26
So there’s three parts of the truck that’s really, really great. The first one is you can see here is that the main screen. So what happens is checks go to an index spot in the warehouse where they basically get their work and their work is done by us having a lot of analytics and a mapping of the warehouse. And we kind of know what orders are coming in. So we can batch them. And then we basically give them worked at the check. And then the check goes off. Zips off to a zone, and it finds some associates and the screen basically says, hey welcome associate like, follow me right follow the leader follows through the through the warehouse.
2:04
And when they went in when the truck is full, the truck bases zips back to the packing station. So that’s where we call it collaborative because it really makes the associates job a lot easier. You know historically, they had to push big trolleys around you know it was heavy. It was slow in this way trucks take 50% of the walking away. And what we’ve seen with the deployment so far is two to three times more efficient at actually picking and packing of orders. So that’s really great. You can you can also see in the picture here, Chuck is pretty versatile because we’re picking different kinds of things in the warehouse and a lot of times we can bring some of this automation to existing warehouses without having to kind of revamp them completely
2:44
because as you can see these checks are pretty mobile they can spin there’s two wheels underneath it. They can spin really quickly. And I don’t know. I don’t know about you Vanessa but I’m not a robotics experts until the last nine months. But what you’re seeing right now with Chuck is also a robot that just recently won two design awards. So the red dot award, which is a very prestigious award. And I think they’ve won. They won 2, 1 for functionality and won for flexibility. So brains and looks of this check apparently are pretty nice. So anyway, we’re really excited about Chuck the team at six rivers. I think is bringing a lot of expertise to us as well.
