How Autonomous Mobile Robots Can Benefit Beverage Distributors

How can autonomous mobile robots benefit beverage distributors?

Autonomous mobile robots for beverage distributors take over the walking that fills a pick shift. A robot carries an empty tote to a pick station, the order filler picks cases into it, and the robot carries the full tote on to staging along a set route. The filler spends the shift at the pick face instead of at the far end of an aisle.

The payoff is measured in hours. A warehouse software vendor puts travel at about 55% of a picker's time, and several vendor blogs cite about 60% of picker time spent walking. Published numbers for beverage distributors are scarce, so the evidence here comes from general warehouse picking. Treat it as a reason to measure your own floor.

We lease the robot through financing, choose the right robot for your site, deploy and integrate it, train your staff and service it nationwide. The lease is quoted after a free site assessment, where we map your aisles, docks and rooms and count your pick runs.

Why do pick runs take so much of the shift?

A beverage distributor's floor is built around volume. Soft drinks, water, energy drinks and beer arrive by the pallet and leave by the case, and one route can call for many products across many aisles. Each order filler walks from location to location, returns to a cart or staging lane, then walks back out again.

Walking is the part of the day that does not move an order forward. Vendor blogs that discuss warehouse picking cite about 60% of a picker's time going to walking, and a software vendor reports travel at about 55%. Neither figure comes from a study of beverage distributors, and the 60% figure cites no original study, so use both as a prompt to look at your own walk distances.

The workforce is large and national. The US Bureau of Labor Statistics counted 2,872,680 stockers and order fillers employed in May 2023. Every hour a filler spends on the walk is an hour not spent on picks, and on a short crew, every lost hour lands on the rest of the route.

What are the main benefits for a distributor?

Throughput is the benefit operators ask about first. In one logistics provider's case study, 12 robots covering a 40,000 sq ft picking area lifted units picked per hour from 65 to 98, which the summary describes as about 50% higher productivity. The same summary reports that overtime fell by 75%. That result comes from a general warehouse and is vendor-reported, so read it as a direction, not a forecast for your floor.

Training time is the second benefit. A supply chain conference paper, also vendor-reported, describes a 139,000 sq ft warehouse with 30 robots, where 80% of units were picked to robots daily and training time for new employees fell 50%. Shorter training matters on any floor where new fillers join during busy weeks.

The third benefit is steadier routes. When fillers stay at their stations, a route depends less on one person's pace along one aisle, and the cases for each stop arrive in the same order every time. For most distributors the walking savings come first, and the gains in overtime and training follow from the same routes.

How does the robot work day to day?

A fleet control system assigns each robot a task, such as a pick wave, a replenishment move or a return. The robot follows its set route to the location, waits for the filler to load or unload, and moves on. Staff set priorities from the control screen, so the robot does not decide the day on its own.

The shift has a rhythm. Waves run through the morning, replenishment fills the pick faces between waves, and returns and empties clear in the afternoon. The sequence below shows a typical day. Times vary by site, and we set them with you once we know your waves and truck schedule.

Staff stay in control at every step. A supervisor can pause a route, send a unit to charge, or take one out of service, and a filler can always move a case by hand. The robot is a tool inside the workflow, not a crew member working alone.

Which areas of the building does the robot cover?

Most of the value sits in the pick aisles, where fillers walk the longest distances. Replenishment from reserve racking comes next, since moving pallets and cases between waves keeps the forward pick faces full without stopping a pick run. Receiving and putaway and the staging lanes at the dock complete the core route network.

The back of house is worth a look too. Returns and empties take up space and trips, and they suit a robot on a fixed route. Cold storage is a question for each room. A robot may suit a refrigerated room if the doors, the floor and the room's conditions fit the unit, and the site assessment checks each of those before anyone plans a route through it.

How does the robot work alongside existing staff?

The robot takes the walking off the team, so the people who remain spend more of the shift at pick stations, checking orders and loading trucks. Some sites run the same team on fewer walking hours. None run without people, because a robot still needs staff to load it, set its route and clear a fault.

Training is short and practical. Fillers learn to load totes, clear a stuck route and read the status screen. Supervisors learn to set waves, pause routes and check the route log. We train your staff and stay on site for go live support until the routes run cleanly.

Expect the first weeks to be about habits more than headcount. Fillers learn to wait at the station for the tote instead of walking back to the cart, and loaders learn to expect cases in stop order. The comparison below shows the difference in the steps of a single pick run.

What drives the savings in hours?

Hours come back from three places: less walking per pick run, fewer stops for replenishment, and fewer trips for returns and empties. Walking is the only one of the three that the sources quantify. Vendor accounts put it at about 55% to 60% of picker time, and a robot can only return the share that is walking, so the size of the gain depends on how far your fillers walk today.

No source we reviewed gives hours saved per shift for a beverage distributor, so this page does not give one. The honest way to find your number is to measure it. We walk the routes, time the pick runs and count the moves, then express the result in hours per shift and hours per week for your floor.

On the labor side, the hours at stake are walking hours. In the logistics provider case above, the reported overtime drop was 75%. That is one vendor's result, and your own overtime records are the better baseline for your crew.

What can the robot not do?

Expect a robot to be a helper on a defined route, not a general worker. The limits matter more than the features when you plan a site.

A pick floor with clear aisles, marked routes and steady replenishment gets the most from a robot. Sites with heavy congestion or frequent layout changes need more planning before the robot is worth adding.

• It does not pick cases from shelves on its own. A filler still picks at the station, and the robot brings the tote.
• It does not enter rooms or doorways it cannot fit, so tight thresholds and uneven docks need checking before go live.
• It does not clear a cluttered floor. Blocked aisles and loose pallets slow every route, and people need to clear them.
• It does not make staffing decisions, load trucks by itself or decide which accounts are served first.

How do you get started?

Start with a free site assessment. We map your aisles, docks and rooms, count your pick runs and walking distances, and find the one or two routes where the hours come back fastest. That map is the basis for the robot choice and for the lease quote.

After the assessment, the lease is quoted through our lease financing programs, and the payment comes in that quote. We then deploy and integrate the robot with your existing systems, train staff and provide go live support. We also service the robot nationwide, with dispatch on site when a fault needs a technician.

Many distributors start with one leased unit on the busiest route as a robot pilot program. Autonomous mobile robots for beverage distributors earn a larger role only after the hours show up in your own route data, so there is no reason to commit to a fleet before the first route proves itself.