Working side by side, robots and humans reinvent warehouse work.
At the Wurth Adams warehouse outside Minneapolis, Minnesota, a shuttle system brings products to employees, who then pick the items they need to complete their orders.
“It’s a goods-to-human system,” says Ken Misch, managing director of operations for the west region. Wurth Adams is part of Wurth Industry North America, a global distributor of fasteners.
Because they don’t have to walk to find each part—previously, workers would chalk up miles every day picking products from more than 100,000 locations within the warehouse—employees at all six picking stations complete between 150 and 200 picks per hour. “Picking efficiency is about 10 to 1 versus the previous method of going to a location, picking, and then driving back,” Misch says.
