How does 6RS Improve Training Time?

6 River Systems’ solution uses a system-directed workflow which self-trains an associate as they complete their picking, replenishment, or various other tasks in the warehouse. Our collaborative robot “Chuck” will guide associates to locations following a pre-planned path that can change dynamically, so they don’t have to know where products are stored or the fastest way to get there. Once at the location, Chuck offers simple and clear instructions on how to perform their picking work. Associates don’t need to learn complex WMS RF terminal sequences or, worse, fuss around with a piece of paper to record the activity later. Additionally, with Chuck’s built in scanner, use of product images and put-to-light system, it has a significant reduction on mispicks and other errors.

Related: See how Legend Valve relies on automation to free up their associates’ time to provide an industry-leading customer experience.

How much do we save in training a new employee?

Let’s analyze a typical new-hire scenario for a site using traditional pick carts versus a site using Chucks.

Typically, it takes 4-5 days to train an associate at a cart pick operation. However, they won’t hit expected productivity, or standard rates, for 4-6 weeks. For this comparison, we are assuming that they are 80% of standard rate in four weeks. However, the associate doesn’t magically start producing at one point; their productivity follows an increasing curve within that time period then slowly levels off as they reach full productivity rates (shown in red).

By contrast, our data shows us that Chucks help an associate up to that 80% of standard rate on day one and then to full productivity in the following few days (shown in blue). Assuming 80 Units Per Hour (UPH) for a cart pick operation, the difference between a fully trained associate and the first six weeks of a new hire would amount to about 7000 units over the six weeks shown.

In terms of labor, these 7000 units represent 87 hours or about 12 days of associate work. Assuming a cost of $13/hr, this is well over $1,100 of unproductive labor for each newly hired employee. By contrast, Chuck, performing at 160 UPH, would only have 320 fewer picks, resulting in the equivalent of 2 lost hours or $26 of unproductive labor.

Related: See why everyone at MD Logistics Loves Chuck.

Fewer interruptions for your best employees

Another benefit of Chuck is that it enables an associate to self-train. When a new associate joins the team, there is often significant time spent by floor managers or sometimes your best associates to train up the newcomer. This means that not only are the new employees not producing a high output, they are slowing down some of your most important people. Usually a senior employee spends 2-3 hours for the first 4-5 days of training, and another half hour per day for the following four weeks. This ends up being about 23 hours of the floor manager’s time and at $15/hr would be an additional ~$350 of training costs. By comparison, with less than 15 minutes of training, the associates can be up and running with Chuck, allowing these valuable employees to focus on other fulfillment tasks and exception handling.

The impact of training during seasonal peaks

Rapid training has an even bigger impact on seasonal and other temporary labor. Let’s compare a seasonal associate with an expected productivity rate of 80 UPH (illustrated above with the green line) using a manual cart with a seasonal associate using Chuck. Assuming a typical 100% rate gain, the Chuck-enhanced associate (illustrated in blue) will reach full productivity at 160 UPH. As illustrated in the graph above, although the associate using carts to pick (the red line) is at their full UPH at the end of peak, their average rate over the entire period is only 57 UPH due to their slow ramp-up. The associate using Chuck, however, hits their stride very quickly and averages 152 UPH. In our last scenario, Chuck provided a 100% gain to your long term workforce. For seasonal workers, it provides a much greater gain: 166%!

Related: Learn how Ingram Micro prepared for a 10x increase in volume last holiday season.

The other option is to hire seasonal associates several weeks prior to peak to allow them adequate time to train. Let’s do a comparison assuming a typical 40 day peak schedule and a 20-day ramp-up time. In this scenario, you will pay labor for an extra 50% more time to train before peak. Even with this pre-training period, the average picking rate over 60 days would be 64 UPH, still giving Chucks a 138% rate advantage for these temporary workers.

Add more flexibility in your business

Possibly more important than cost savings is flexibility in your operation. The rapid training possibilities 6 River Systems provides allows for a much more agile business. For example, during the current COVID-19 crisis, many of our customers have seen unanticipated peaks as the demand on ecommerce spiked. They were able to rapidly add additional Chucks and temporary labor to adjust for this demand, far more quickly than otherwise possible. And in some cases, they picked up and moved Chucks across their different facilities to support regional spikes in volume. Temporary and portable capacity is something that no traditional automation can offer.

Related: See how keeping their automation solution flexible allowed DM Fulfillment Services to thrive in uncertain times.

Final Thoughts

Increasing productivity through rate gains is one of the largest benefits of 6 River Systems’ solution. It is important to realize that there are other factors that have significant monetary and non-monetary benefits. The advantages of a system directed approach using mobile collaborative robots that assists associates in the warehouse has a huge impact on training times. This not only translates directly into the bottom line, but also allows your business to be more nimble and adjust quickly to the rapidly changing world.

The post Why training time matters more than you think appeared first on 6 River Systems.

For many shoppers, the holiday season excitement begins today — Black Friday.

For distribution center operators, the season brings the challenge of meeting peak volume and service demands.

The National Retail Federation (NRF) forecasts that consumers will spend upwards of $731 billion this holiday shopping season, including $167 billion (23%) on e-commerce purchases.

Leave the excitement to the shoppers

6 River Systems (6RS) strives to help its customers make holiday peak a non-event through strategic planning and predictable fulfillment performance and throughput.

For operations with significant peak impacts, the collaborative planning process begins in the summer. That’s when 6RS’ solution design, customer support, hardware, and reliability teams begin conversations with customer operations leaders.

Typically, the facility GM, fulfillment leader and project leader participate in the meetings. The customers share their volume projections, potential operation impacts, obstacles, and peak objectives. Some facilities even mimic peak conditions by delaying order picking to create volume spikes. The insights gained through these efforts help operators to determine what changes may be needed to handle the increased volumes.

Labor impacts

6RS works closely with customer operations teams to understand their labor plans. This includes calculating the number of additional collaborative mobile robots, Chucks, that are required within the facility to support peak.

In facilities requiring additional Chucks, our team ensures that the new robots can work smoothly within the warehouse footprint and drive throughput. When that analysis is complete, the additional Chucks are built, delivered, and then deployed.

Process impacts

While most operators are concerned about picking activities, the pre-peak collaboration also revealed several other process challenges. Most notably, solutions designers found “breaking points” in replenishment, order packout, and other functional areas.

This review allowed 6RS to identify and resolve potential peak process issues in a controlled environment, making sure that the operations are prepared for — not surprised by — peak.

Peak tune-up and execution

In addition to strategic planning and stress tests, 6RS completed preventive hardware maintenance inspections and repairs at all sites expecting significant peak impact. During peak, 6RS will work with the facility leaders to address any unforeseen volume increases, fulfillment-related issues, or requirements changes.

This holiday season, 6RS plans to leave the excitement and surprises to the shoppers.

The post Keep the excitement of the holidays in the right place: with the consumers. appeared first on 6 River Systems.

For most operations, this short-lived volume increase makes it both inefficient and costly to make any major infrastructure transformations within the warehouse. Historically, warehouse operators have relied primarily on seasonal labor to increase throughput to meet peak demand. However, due to record low unemployment rates in recent years, this approach is no longer feasible. 

In September 2018, unemployment rates in the US dropped to 3.7%. This marked the lowest rate in the US since 1969, and it has remained in the 3.6% to 4% range through October of 2019. This labor shortage caused 20% of warehouse jobs to go unfulfilled in 2018, and similar outcomes are forecast for this peak season. Even after operators increased wages in an effort to attract employees, the available supply remained so limited that this gap could not be bridged.

To further exacerbate this dilemma, customer expectations around delivery time have drastically increased. With Amazon as the number one online retailer offering free one-day shipping–and, most recently, two-hour shipping–consumers expect their packages to arrive immediately and free of charge. 

This shift in expectations has caused the bar for fulfillment to be higher than ever before. If retail and ecommerce warehouses are unable to keep up with Amazon’s standards, especially during peak, they risk losing market share to those who do. 

The case for collaborative robots:
Scalability, quick implementation, labor shortage

Collaborative robots, or “cobots,” are the new way warehouses fulfill. Their flexible and adaptive capacity allow them to increase both productivity and order selection accuracy in warehouse operations. These benefits are especially critical during volume peaks, as the ongoing labor shortage prevents operations from being able to rely on seasonal labor to bridge the gap. 

Therefore, it should come as no surprise that cobots are on the rise. ABI Research projects the current number of robotic warehouses to grow by more than 12x by 2025, at which point there will be 4 million commercial robots in over 50,000 warehouses. 

Below are some of the key flexibility factors throughout the entire life cycle that make cobots so compelling:

How to achieve peak productivity:
Consider experience, solution breadth, fast ROI

While there are several different collaborative robotics systems to choose from, 6 River Systems’ (6RS) solution is uniquely differentiated from its competitors.

• Team: The founders are former Kiva executives, and possess unmatched experience and success in designing and implementing successful warehouse robotics systems. The team has installed more collaborative robotics systems than any other company.
• Product Line: With fully automated picking, sorting, and packout products launched in 2019, 6RS has extended its capabilities to an end-to-end fulfillment solution. The system, based on a patented worker directed approach, integrates with a wide variety of material handling and software systems.
• Ongoing Value: Chucks gain core product functionality in addition to new features every year. Chuck was initially released as a cobot for discrete order picking. Just 2½ years later, the same Chuck also can batch pick, replenish, be used in automated picking, and charge automatically when its battery is low. The capabilities will expand even further by next peak season. 
• Analytics: Embedded dashboards provide operational insights on associate performance and hours worked by task type. Operators leverage this data to identify potential problem areas and for labor planning.
• Customer Success Focus: After implementation, 6RS assigns a multi-disciplinary, dedicated team with a single point of contact to ensure success. 6RS has committed to raising the average performance rate of its customer sites over the course of 2020. 
• Return on Investment: 6RS increases productivity by 2-3x and is installed in weeks, making the return on investment extremely compelling.

6 River Systems customer success stories

	“We think we’ve found a really great partner in 6 River and a really great technology on Chuck. We look forward to building upon that and taking off from here as we continue to improve our operations.” – Bob Abbondanza, Senior Director Supply Chain Engineering and Network Design
	“In peak season, we will have a greater capacity and be able to pick more with less labor by using 6 River Systems.” – Ryan Robertson, Director of Operations, Retail Logistics
	“We hit a return on investment with 6 River Systems in about 4 months. We wanted to streamline the process and remove as many steps as possible. With 6 River Systems, pickers stay in aisle the entire time and the amount of units they’re processing per hour has tripled.” – Ryan Cox, Industrial Engineer

For more information, review success stories from several 6RS customers, including ACT Fulfillment Center, NFI, Healing Hands, and Office Depot. We can also discuss the solution that’s right for you. Contact us today.

About the Author

Callie Moriarty is one of 6 River Systems’ first Customer Success Managers. She is responsible for the optimization, success, and overall customer satisfaction at ten live 6RS customer sites. After being a part of 6RS’ holiday peak season in 2018, she wanted to share the overwhelming value of collaborative robotics with her current and future customers.

The post Are you prepared to meet peak season fulfillment challenges? appeared first on 6 River Systems.