Product variety and volume volatility resolved in fast moving e-commerce

Based in Mullingar, Ireland, RDS, a global leading-edge robotics systems integration OEM, is deploying multiple machines across blue-chip consumer companies. These machines operate in dedicated pick-and-package cells within the logistics warehouses of a leading global e-commerce company. Already well established in the USA, this dedicated-cell approach is seeing growing deployment in Asia and Europe, too. RDS is a leader in delivering equipment with profound flexibility, recipe management, throughput rates, and reliability.

Customers of RDS with their huge arrays of products and order volumes demand levels of flexibility that require machines to be multi-role and multi-product. With these demands encompassing the product-transfer technologies too, the MagneMover LITE ICS is the ideal solution due to its almost infinite motion profiles, adaptability, and fast-changeover capabilities. It also integrates effectively with widely used third-party systems.

Alan Hanniffy, program manager at RDS, said: Modern e-commerce is all about adaptability, speed, and quality. Single machines have to offer multiple capabilities, often within confined spaces, so we're always looking for agile solutions that give us enhanced capabilities, which the MagneMover LITE ICS delivers. This complements our own machine offerings, with the levels of flexibility, robustness and precision that are required to address the growing and more volatile list of challenges given to us by our customers, which include greater savings, larger returns on investment, and greater efficiency.

Project risk mitigation is a key factor, too, Hanniffy said. When dealing with bespoke, never-before-seen solutions, with substantial timeframe and schedule demands involving million-euro budgets, our use of Rockwell Automation's Emulate3D virtual commissioning software means we can work towards creating right-first-time designs far quicker, and mitigate risk much earlier in the project lifecycle more efficiently.

Phil Hadfield, sales director for Northern Europe at Rockwell Automation, said: Agile in-machine and in-plant logistics are just as important as the automation technology they serve, in order that the benefits of digitalized architectures can be fully realized. This deployment of our MagneMover LITE ICS is a textbook example of an application that demands a level of flexibility that can only be delivered by a smart servo-based conveyor solution.

Both platforms will soon see further deployment in a research-and-testing loading cell within the Robotics and Drives Services dedicated R&D centre. Currently under construction, the customer-experience demonstration will be used by RDS and Rockwell Automation to showcase capabilities and technology partnerships to prospective customers. It will also focus on researching new approaches and the latest innovations to showcase to existing and emerging customers.