To serve those customers, Randa operates a far-flung DC network that includes facilities in Toronto, Canada; Melbourne, Australia; Glenrothes, Scotland; and Johannesburg, South Africa. It also operates three sites in the United States, located in New Orleans; Reno, Nevada; and Fort Worth, Texas.
At those facilities, workers carry out the usual warehousing tasks: processing forms; inspecting products; and packing, weighing, and shipping inventory. And an unlucky few are charged with one of the least desirable work assignments in the warehouse—unloading incoming containers. What makes the task so unpopular is its “discomfort factor”: The work is arduous and repetitive, and it must be performed in spaces that grow very hot in the summer and cold in the winter. So in a bid to ease the pain for employees, Randa went looking for a solution to automate the job.
LIGHTENING THE LOAD
After a lengthy search, Randa found what it was looking for in an autonomous unloading robot from Cambridge, Massachusetts robotics specialist Pickle Robot Co. Designed to unload trucks, trailers, and import containers at human-scale or better performance, the Pickle Robot consists of a bright green robotic arm mounted on a rolling base. The unit is also smart, leveraging computer vision, machine learning, generative AI (artificial intelligence), and sensors to guide its actions. Thanks to its advanced “autonomy stack,” it’s able to navigate its way inside a container or trailer, pick up boxes of various shapes and sizes using a suction-based gripper, and deposit the cases on a flexible conveyor that moves them into the DC for the next step in the receiving process.
In mid-October, Randa deployed a Pickle Robot at its Fort Worth logistics fulfillment center, where it was immediately put to work unloading containers. Today, the robot does the heavy lifting—which in this case means unloading cartons weighing up to 30 pounds from containers that hold between 800 and 1,200 cases apiece—while associates manage the robot and downstream processes inside the building. As of early January, the Pickle Robot had unloaded over 1.5 million pounds of apparel, according to the two companies.
As for how the robot has been received by its human co-workers, the news is good on that count. According to Randa, the company’s inbound team and fulfillment associates have had a positive reaction to working alongside the Pickle Robot and now consider the robot to be a team member.
“We are always looking for innovative technology that improves the work experience for our associates and the efficiency of our operations,” Randy Kennedy, chief logistics officer for Randa Apparel & Accessories, said in a release. “We’ve been looking for a viable container unloading solution for over five years because this is a critical part of our operations. The Pickle Robot ticks all the right boxes for Randa.”
