Among the 10 companies honored in 2020 for utilizing technologies that will shape tomorrow’s supply chains, NextGen has recognized 6 River Systems customer NFI with the 2020 NextGen Supply Chain Award. The industry-leading supply chain provider partnered with 6 River Systems to bring flexible automation to one of their distribution centers in Indiana, increasing productivity when fulfilling orders for their customers’ consumers.

What NFI said:

“By partnering with technology providers such as 6 River Systems, we have been able to help our customers remain flexible and agile,” said Jimmy Shafer, Senior Vice President of Integrated Design & Solutions at NFI. “This flexibility has enabled our customers to remain competitive and resilient during COVID-19, despite the challenges various industries have collectively faced as a result. Innovation remains a priority at NFI and we continue to explore and invest in new technologies that will not only provide greater efficiency for our customers, but redefine the employee experience.”

NFI’s Results:

• Increased picking accuracy to 99%
• Increased average units picked per hour to 85
• Reduced employee onboarding time from 72 hours to 6 hours
• Enabled rapid employee onboarding during peak season

Read the full release

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Jerome Dubois, 6 River Systems co-CEO and co-founder

There are lots of warehouse robotics companies on the market now, all trying to make fulfillment faster and better. Most of their solutions fixate on eliminating long walks — the time associates rack up walking around to and from the picking area. From an automation perspective, that’s a fine approach, but a narrow one. There are more inefficiencies lurking in between the aisles of a warehouse that go beyond just non-value-added walking.

At 6 River Systems, we use software in addition to our robot Chuck to generate performance improvements for your associates and our equipment. Here’s how:

Reducing in-aisle steps

In warehouses with manual carts, pickers spend a lot of time walking in between aisles in a mostly random fashion. At first glance, it may make sense, for example, to pick in FIFO (first in, first out) order, taking the first four pick lists from the stack at the wave prep desk. This leads operators to pick items for orders 1 through 4 in chronological order, often one order at a time, and possibly revisiting the same aisle or the very same location more than once. But what if orders 1,2, 8, and 10 have picks in the same aisle or even the same location? And what if the operator knew how many total items to pick for their cart at the location?

That’s exactly what our software does. We call it smart work allocation. We apply advanced algorithms and AI in our cloud-based servers to actually reduce the number of steps that an operator takes and aisles they visit. Our software decides, in real-time, which picks are the best for your pickers while they’re in-aisle, creating more dense and productive routes than they’d get using manual carts.

Doing tasks more efficiently

Once pickers get in-aisle, they run into another efficiency problem: picking the right items into the right totes. In an entirely manual situation, pickers are juggling a lot. They are rarely hands-free because they need to handle an RF gun, a paper pick list and push a manual cart. They need to identify which bin the pick is located in, and they need to make sure they’re picking the right item into the right tote.

With our software, the robot stops exactly where the pick is located, displays a picture of the item on a screen and lights up on the left or right, indicating which side of the aisle the pick is located in. The software also powers the put-to-light technology, which shows pickers which totes to place items into.

The 6 River Systems software enables us to deliver huge value to customers. They see 2X to 3X gains in pick rates, less walking in aisle, more accurate picks and happier associates. For more information on 6 River Systems technology, visit our website at 6river.com.

For a visual take on this, check out my latest whiteboard video session:

Related: How collaborative robotics deliver better value than goods-to-person

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Eran Frenkel

Buying the right warehouse automation for your peak season is like buying the right car. Most of the time you’ll be driving the speed limit, but occasionally you’ll need to hit the gas. If your business is sensitive to e-commerce and retail peaks (such as Black Friday and Cyber Monday), you’ll want to make sure your warehouse automation equipment doesn’t break down exactly when you need it most.

When it comes to managing multiple peak seasons for our various customers, we take nothing for granted. We’ve recruited the most talented engineers and built a diverse Technical Operations (TechOps) function. My team of 20+ engineers come from tech powerhouses such as Amazon, Microsoft and the U.S. Navy, and elite engineering programs including Columbia, Dartmouth and Duke. TechOps is working around-the-clock to make sure our customers have a successful peak.

Here’s how we prepare our customers for peak:

1. Audit all components of our solution

Before our customers step on the gas for peak, we will conduct extensive, multi-faceted audits of all the components of the deployed system including the following:

• Number of robots: We will re-evaluate the latest peak volume forecast to determine if sites have enough Chucks, our collaborative mobile robot. Instead of calling the temp agency, our customers may rent more robots just for peak to double their productivity.
• Preventative maintenance: Much like you would winterize your car, we will perform a multi-point inspection on each deployed robot to guarantee our fleets are in tip-top shape for peak.
• Software infrastructure: We will ensure that each one of the SaaS components that support customer sites is up to date, stable and can scale to support peak throughput. Our cloud infrastructure allows us to respond to customer needs quickly and provide the stability sites can rely on.

Outcome – Audits will result in a site-specific assessment that will determine if customer is ready for peak. We will share the finding with our customers and collaborate to quickly address gaps.

2. Pretend it’s peak (for two hours)

We’ve done the audits, addressed gaps, and now it’s time to ensure the reliability and stability of our system in real, peak-like conditions. So we will go on site and operate at peak throughput for two hours. Luckily most sites do this stress-testing already, so in best-case scenarios, we plug ourselves into existing tests.

Outcome – The result of the stress test will be recommendations and improvement steps to guarantee sites operate at maximum performance during peak.

3. Host Chuck training refreshers

A line of Chucks stand ready to work.

We know that during peak most of our sites hire temp employees who will enter a warehouse with robots for the first time ever. Although associates can learn how to use Chuck in a matter of minutes, our customer success managers will be onsite before and during peak to ensure training runs smoothly.

Outcome – Associates, pickers, site managers and maintenance staff will know how to use Chuck, monitor performance, make basic repairs and confidently be able to train others.

4. Provide the best version of our system for your peak

When peak finally arrives, our team will make sure customer sites are fully operational and hitting performance targets. Here are some of the mechanisms we will use to secure success:

• Early alerting: We’ve deployed an early alerting system that predicts site outages, so we can proactively prevent them without causing any downtime.
• War room: We will continuously monitor our sites’ performance throughout peak. We’ll go through alerts, outages and key performance indicators, and share any opportunities we identify to improve rates.
• Streamlined support: We’ve launched a brand new support portal that simplifies issue reporting and diagnostics. If we do have any issues, 6 River engineers are on call 24/7 to quickly fix them. We’ll also dispatch our engineers across customer sites to either be onsite or in a hub near multiple sites, so they will be able to act quick if and when issues arise.

Outcome – Providing 100% system availability throughout peak. However, our work doesn’t end when peak ends. Starting Christmas, when peak comes to a close, our team will collect lessons learned to create an even better peak readiness plan for next year. We succeed when our customers succeed!

Eran Frenkel is the Director of Technical Operations at 6 River Systems.

How are you planning peak? What issues do you run into? Get a second opinion on your peak preparedness by scheduling a quick call with us.

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So, why ‘6 River Systems’?

6 River Systems is named after the Charles River, which is a six-river system. For those who haven’t been to Boston, the Charles River flows right through the center of the city. We think this is an awesome place to start a company. Many of us grew up here and love living in New England.

And what’s the other meaning about?

The 6 River Systems solution eliminates non-value added walking, creates in-aisle efficiencies and intelligently groups tasks. All of these benefit pickers, the primary users of 6 River Systems. So naturally, the second meaning behind our name has to do with how Chuck, our collaborative mobile robot, helps with picking.

There are seven steps to picking in a warehouse and six our collaborative mobile robot solution makes faster — hence, the ‘6’ in 6 River Systems.

Here are the steps:

1. Long walk. Chucks keep pickers busy in the active pick area, eliminating long walks to packout or to pick up a new cart.
2. Find bin. Chucks help pickers find the bin that contains the right item. The robot leads pickers on an optimized pick path, and parks right in front of the correct bin.
3. Find the product. Chucks come with a tablet-sized screen that displays the pick item, saving pickers time idenifying the correct product.
4. Grab item. Chucks do not help with this step. Chuck is a collaborative robot that helps pickers improve their job. The robot does not replace them.
5. Confirm the product. Chucks have scanners that let pickers confirm a pick hands-free.
6. Put item away. Lights on Chuck’s trays illuminate to highlight which tote to place products into, ensuring pickers are always assembling the right orders.
7. Transition. When pickers complete a task on Chuck, the robot uses smart work grouping to seamlessly move them onto another task.

Want to learn more about Chuck and 6 River Systems? Check out our Solutions page, or call us at 1-800-60-CHUCK.

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