Speaker 1Welcome to the New Warehouse Podcast, the podcast for those that are curious about what's possible inside their four walls. Before we get into this episode, let's hear a word from our sponsors that make this all possible. In my operations years, it seemed like we were always trying to find more space or we needed a quick storage solution for a special project. That's why when I discovered Palite and their Palite Picks solution, I was excited. Made from ultra strong engineered honeycomb structured board, these corrugated shelving units can support up to 1100 pounds. They're definitely stronger than they look and they come to you flat packed for easy installation in minutes. I've built them and utilize them myself. They provide customizable configurations with up to 400 pick faces. If you need storage, quick, or you need to maximize space utilization, you need Palite. Check them out at palitegroup.com. That's P-A-L-L-I-T-E group.com. If you're listening to this podcast, then you're most likely looking to discover the latest innovations in warehousing, logistics, automation, and supply chain. Why not do some of that discovery in person when the Intro Logistics Conference and Trade Show hits Dallas on September 16th. And 17th. This free show will be at the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center. And I'm excited to be on the floor to explore cutting edge technologies, see live product demonstrations, and hear from industry experts. Register for free today at intrologisticsusa.com and join me in Dallas on September 16th and 17th. I'll see you there. Thank you to our sponsors. And now let's get to the podcast.
Speaker 2The New Warehouse Podcast hosted by Kevin Lawton is your source for insights and ideas from the distribution, transportation, and logistics industry. A new episode every Monday morning brings you the latest from industry experts and thought leaders. And now, here's Kevin.
Speaker 1Hey, it's Kevin with the New Warehouse Podcast here at Modex 2026 in Atlanta. And right now, I am in the Ocado Intelligent Automation booth, and I'm with David Sheffrin, and we are going to hear a little bit about Ocado Solutions. One of them is behind us right now. And then we're going to jump over and see some of the other solutions in their second booth, too, as well. A large presence here, David.
Speaker 3It's exciting. Yeah, so Modex is important to us. It's a great place for us to meet the people in North America who are looking for these kinds of solutions. What you see behind me is the Ocado Storage and Retrieval System. So this is our high-density, tote-based storage fulfillment solution. And normally, this would go to the top of the warehouse. And what you see behind me would be up on top of that grid would be the robots that are moving around the totes and picking the items. What's really exciting about this solution is that we have robots that are on top of the grid that do a high percentage of the picking and fulfilling of orders with absolutely no human touches. In fact, we do approximately 5 million picks a week right now with those robots. And so it's a really exciting solution. And what we're excited about is that in North America, it's apparel companies, grocery companies, healthcare distributors, really anybody who does a high-level fulfillment of items at the each's level uses this kind of a solution.
Speaker 1Yeah, absolutely. And I think really interesting to see it working live here. And as you mentioned, obviously, it goes higher in an operation. I mean, how high can it go?
Speaker 3Yeah, so what's behind me is a two-tote high stack.
Speaker 1Oh, this is two totes.
Speaker 3Normally, we do 21 totes high. So you'd go to the ceiling and cube out an entire warehouse.
Speaker 1Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So really interesting to see this here. And obviously, very interesting to see the robotic arms on top that are picking the individual pieces with the gripper. So tell us a little bit about what has been some of the reaction here on the show as people see this in action.
Speaker 3Yeah, one of the funny things people say a lot, which I understand, is they're like, oh, you always have the covers off of your robots?
Speaker 4Yeah.
Speaker 3And they've got a very unique design, and it represents a lot of our design philosophy at Ocado.
Speaker 4Okay.
Speaker 3So the robots, they... They look kind of skeletal. They're actually 3D printed. And we did that to make the robots as light as they possibly can be, because every design decision that we're making is about throughput. And so light robots means they can accelerate faster. It means we can have more robots on the grid because they're lighter. And then it also lets their batteries last longer. So we actually, we don't put covers on them. There's no use for covers. Yeah. But they really look kind of futuristic that way. They do.
Speaker 1They do. They do look super cool. Yeah, yeah. Very cool. Yeah. I thought that was just for the show.
Speaker 3Exactly right. No, that's the product.
Speaker 1Wow. Excellent. Fantastic, yeah.
Speaker 3Great. You know, another one of those design decisions is back in the corner, you'll see another robot.
Speaker 1Okay.
Speaker 3And so some kind of this technology, the way they'll do is the robots, when they need to charge their batteries, they'll go park at a charger.
Speaker 4Okay.
Speaker 3And they'll charge the battery. We don't do that. We go over to that other robot in the corner, and that robot changes out the battery. So in 30 seconds, the robot is back in operation. Yeah. And so again, it's that same technology. The design philosophy of every design decision is about high performance, high throughput, high flexibility, density.
Speaker 1Yeah. And maximizing that efficiency and that throughput overall. So now we do see two different robot types here. We have the one with the robotic arm, and then the one you were talking about that looks like it's just so futuristic and modern, right? So tell us, what's the difference between the two? Like, obviously the one is piece picking. What's the other one doing?
Speaker 3Yeah. So the square robots are running around the grid, and they're picking up totes and placing totes. Got it. And so if you think about a normal warehouse might have anywhere from, I don't know, 50,000 to a million bins, there's a massive AI component to figuring out what to pick, where to place it, where to stage it. And what these robots are doing is they're bringing those totes to these picking arms, and each one of those picking arms can reach eight totes around it. And so it's picking from supply totes, placing items in order totes.
Speaker 1Got it. Okay. So the robotic arm is... Stationary.
Speaker 3Yes.
Speaker 1Got it. Okay. Okay. Okay. So they're basically going, digging through and getting the bin and bringing the proper bins over to be able to fulfill the orders that need to be picked.
Speaker 3Exactly.
Speaker 1Got it. Okay.
Speaker 3And they pick whatever robots can pick, and then whatever needs to be picked by a person, we just send that tote down to a pick station, and people do that picking.
Speaker 1Gotcha. Okay. All right. So the ones that can be picked by the robotic arm go to the robotic arm, right? And then the other ones go out to, I guess, a pick place for people to pull those out. So how does the system know? Like, which items can go to the robotic arm, and which ones can't?
Speaker 3There's such an AI and data and learning thing that goes on there. So we call it entitlement. And our goal is to have a larger and larger percentage of the items in the grid be able to be picked by the robot. And we start to learn which items robots have trouble picking and which ones they do well. And so what we do is the ones that we know the robots don't pick, we send to a person. The ones we know the robots do pick... We send to the robot. Those ones that are kind of in the middle there, there's a lot more trial and error that goes into that. And we might try with a robot, and if it fails, it goes to the person. Or we might do some additional training around that time.
Speaker 1Ah, interesting. Okay. So if it goes to the robot and it can't pick it, then the system will automatically reroute that bin?
Speaker 3Totally. There's such a need for resiliency in a system like this. Another one of the design concepts is no single point of failure. And so, you know, we have a lot of ways that we think through that. And as you think about building this kind of a highly automated warehouse, that's an important discussion topic that we'll have with you again and again and again and again.
Speaker 1Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. All right. Fantastic to hear about the OSRS here. And if people want to get access to this, I mean, is this readily available for installation?
Speaker 3It totally is. And in fact, if you want to get more information, go to okadointelligentautomation.com. And we actually have a virtual factory tour where that takes you step-by-step through the entire... Process where you can see it online.
Speaker 1Oh, cool. All right. Well, we'll definitely check that out at thenewwarehouse.com as well. But this isn't the only robots you have, right? You got the other booth across the way here. So we're going to head over there and check out Chuck and Porter, right?
Speaker 3Let's do it.
Speaker 1All right. Let's do it. All right. Now we're at Okado's other booth. So David, tell us a little bit about what's going on here.
Speaker 3Thank you. Yes. So this is our booth for Okado IQ. And Okado IQ is Okado's execution, fulfillment software. And what it does is it sits below your WMS in a fulfillment warehouse. And what we do is we take your orders. Maybe you drop two hours, four hours worth of orders to us. And then it's our software that creates the most efficient fulfillment strategy for that, enabled by our two AMR platforms, Chuck, which has been around for years and is one of the most popular AMRs on the planet. And then what we're announcing new today is Porter, his big, brother, which, which handles pallets and does case fulfillment, uh,
Speaker 1using a PAL framework. Yeah, interesting. So the Ocado IQ is kind of driving the actions of both Chuck and Porter, right? So tell us a little bit about, you know, like you mentioned, Chuck has been in the market for quite some time, right? So tell us a little bit more about Porter and kind of, you know, where the idea for Porter came from and what was kind of the demand in the market
Speaker 3there? Thank you. Yeah. So we have a lot of customers who use Chuck, love Chuck. Chuck is so good at individual item fulfillment. Right. And so many of those operations also do, you know, mixed pallet fulfillment where they'll take supply pallets and they'll create mixed case pallets. And what they're looking for is the same workflows that they have available to them on Chuck, but also be able to do their case fulfillment operation, you know, perhaps in an omni-channel environment or something like that. So that's why we responded to that request and released Porter.
Speaker 1All right. Interesting. And, Yeah. And so now you just said Porter is Chuck's big brother. Yeah. Sometimes brothers, they got to work together, right? They do. So Chuck and Porter, I mean, in one operation, how can they kind of coordinate and work together for some of those omni-channel settings that you mentioned?
Speaker 3Yeah. So first and foremost, they work on the exact same Ocado IQ platform.
Speaker 1Okay.
Speaker 3And they are designed to work in the same operation workflow.
Speaker 4Yeah.
Speaker 3And so if you think about a facility where you're going to receive pallets, Right. Porter can bring pallets from inbound to put away. Okay. And you could also do fulfillment in the aisles. There's a number of workflows and ways we can do that. One of them is for Porter to use the same workflows that Chuck uses where we can sweep down an aisle or we can have Porters meet, you know, the operator in pick zones to kind of collaborate in a, you know, in kind of multiple Porters with multiple people mode. And then one of the workflows that's getting a lot of traction, we call goods to person, which is you set up a pallet fulfillment area and Porter brings the supply totes to the operator so they can build the order pallets. And then, and then Porter manages the, you know, the bringing to and from that cell, the order pallets and the supply pallets.
Speaker 1Yeah. Interesting. Interesting. And, and interesting to hear and see Porter. So, so Porter is actually out here and Porter can also pick up the pallet itself.
Speaker 3It can. So it could pick up pallets from the floor and place them to the floor. Okay. And it fixes one of the real tricky, uh, issues that, that has existed is with AMRs is it's often very difficult to pick up or put down an empty or a lightweight pallet. And so you can imagine if it's, if a AMR is based like on a pallet truck type frame, it typically has wheels that, that have to roll over the runners on some pallets. And if it's a light pallet or an empty pallet, it could just push that pallet. So you have to put up like metal bars on the ground or something to push against so that you can pick up those pallets. Yeah. Well, Porter's got a really, really good idea. He's got a really unique fork design where it actually pulls up to the pallet. It extends true forks into the pallet, picks it up and then places it on the AMR and then does that in reverse to drop it off. So it has no problems with empty pallets or lightweight pallets.
Speaker 1Oh, I see. So, so Porter, the, it's kind of leveraging the actual base of Porter in a sense to, to accomplish that and not have to use something else to leverage.
Speaker 3Exactly. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1Very, very interesting. And really cool to see Porter here and Chuck and, you know, the, the brothers together, right. And in this booth here and hear about Okado IQ. So, so really interesting to see how all these robotic solutions are kind of coming together under the Okado platform. And really appreciate you sharing more information about us and showing it off to us. So if people want to learn more about whether it's Chuck, Porter, or the OSRS we talked about before,
Speaker 3what's the best way to do that? Thank you. Yeah. The best way to do that is our website, go to okadointelligentautomation.com and you can see all of our solutions there.
Speaker 1All right. Fantastic. And we'll put all that information at thenewwarehouse.com as well as in the show notes here. So check out more information about Okado and David, thank you once again for your time.
Speaker 2You've been listening to the New Warehouse Podcast with Kevin Lawton. Subscribe and check us out online at thenewwarehouse.com.
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