It’s still early in the new year, which means there’s time to implement smart automation strategies that can deliver big savings in the warehouse in 2025. One of the easiest ways to do that is to bring in autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) to augment picking tasks, a step industry experts say can drastically reduce the amount of manpower required for picking—which can account for as much as half of the labor needed in e-commerce and similar fulfillment-focused operations.
“It’s all about the pick,” explains John Saltzman, vice president of design engineering for S&H Systems, which plans, designs, installs, and maintains material handling systems. “In my experience, up to 50% of the labor expended in a building—especially if it’s a more manual operation—can be for picking. And when you have picking operations, you have a lot of walking. So people are trying to avoid the travel.”
The right AMR solution can help by reducing or eliminating the need for associates to traverse the building to fill orders—ultimately reducing the number of pickers required and speeding the fulfillment process at the same time.
“That’s your primary labor savings opportunity, at a very high level, in a fulfillment-style operation,” Saltzman says.
More companies are seeking to capitalize on those benefits these days. A January market outlook report from research firm Interact Analysis forecast double-digit growth for mobile robotics through 2030—estimates are for 20% to 30% globally.
Experts like Saltzman say business leaders should consider the size of their operation, business growth projections, stock-keeping unit (SKU) counts and velocity, and a range of other factors to determine whether or not AMRs are the best way to automate their facility’s picking operations. Here are two high-level pieces of advice to get the process started.
CONSIDER YOUR VOLUME
AMRs for picking most often take the form of small, Roomba-style robots that are programmed to travel through warehouse aisles, retrieving totes, bins, or entire shelves of products and delivering them to workstations, where associates select items needed to fill orders. Variations include AMRs that assist pickers by following them through the warehouse and guiding them along the best pick path, as well as those that assist in an aisle or pick zone and then perform the heavy lifting, delivering items to the next zone and, ultimately, to a pack-out station.
The size and complexity of the operation, along with the number of people and shifts required to make it work, are key factors in determining whether or not such a system will reduce labor needs. For the most part, these systems work best in low- to medium-density environments, where there is room for the robots to travel and workers are filling a moderate number of orders per hour. That said, large-scale e-commerce operations with extremely dense storage, long travel distances, and high throughput volumes can utilize AMR systems, but these high-performance solutions will often be combined with traditional sorters or zone routing systems to alleviate AMR congestion and streamline flow. Saltzman says AMRs work best in facilities that require quick and easy access to a wide variety of items—often those that require pickers to travel to multiple pick zones to fill orders.
With those parameters in place, the labor savings add up: Saltzman says that in some large-scale picking operations, he’s seen AMRs reduce the amount of labor required by as much as two-thirds.
“So if you needed 100 employees to pick, now you only need 33,” he says, adding that, most often, companies either reallocate that saved labor to other tasks in the warehouse or use the technology to fill labor gaps. “With AMR solutions, you’re not going to eliminate labor completely. What I’ve seen, typically, is that [companies use AMRs to address] attrition or to reallocate people. The real challenge is finding labor, [especially] high-quality labor.”
Norm Saenz, a partner and managing director at supply chain consulting firm St. Onge Co.—which also designs and installs warehousing and material handling solutions—agrees and adds that risk management also factors into the equation.
“Covid changed everyone’s perception [about labor],” Saenz explains. “What if I don’t have staffing? What if I need people and can’t get them to come in or can’t find them? [Because of this shift,] companies are kind of forced to automate to be able to run their operation.”
ASSESS YOUR REAL ESTATE
Another key point: AMRs work well in established facilities where constructing more traditional, infrastructure-heavy picking systems is impossible or would disrupt operations. Traditional automated material handling systems incorporate fixed equipment, such as conveyors, sorters, and extensive racking and storage. AMRs require none of that and can be programmed to work right alongside existing infrastructure. Those features reduce both the cost and time involved in automating the picking process.
“These types of technologies are some of the more cost-effective options—[with] shorter leadtimes to source and to install and get up and running,” Saenz says. “So they are very attractive—and they can fit within existing operations [easily]. They do a lot to reduce labor costs, and you don’t have to put in a large infrastructure [system].”
AMRs can also be scaled for seasonality and to meet long-term growth demands, meaning that customers can start small and add robots as their needs change. Many vendors offer special leasing or robots-as-a-service (RaaS) options to accommodate those needs.
But the experts caution that potential customers shouldn’t take all that flexibility and scalability too lightly. As with any automation strategy, implementing AMRs requires careful planning and testing before they can be up and running and producing results. St. Onge Co. uses simulation models to ensure that the AMRs will operate properly in the space—considering speed, turning radius requirements, aisle and bay widths, and the like.
“As much as there is awesome technology [out there], you have to install it properly [so that it can] navigate the aisles and the racking perfectly, or it’s not going to work,” Saenz says. “You can’t skip the onsite testing and acceptance testing … [because] you won’t get the benefits if it’s not working properly.”
Thankfully, AMR success stories abound, according to Saenz and Saltzman—a factor that’s sparking demand for the technology across the logistics industry.
“It’s almost funny how many [AMR] projects we’re getting requests for back to back,” says Saenz. “We always start with conventional ways to get more out of an operation—process changes, layout tweaks, and so forth—and then we look at other [types of] mechanization and technologies [that have been] around for decades. But [AMRs] are playing a role in almost every master plan we do.”
Saltzman agrees.
“We do get more inquiries in that direction, absolutely,” he says, crediting high-profile warehouse robotics projects at large retailers like Amazon.com as market motivators. “I expect it to increase. We have more customers that are requesting [mobile robotic solutions].”
