Published August 14, 2020
For distribution centers, it’s possible to implement social distancing measures on an industrial level by utilizing technologies that can allow only a few employees, connected only by automation, to do what just a couple years ago might have taken dozens or even hundreds of people to do while working in close proximity with each other.
By merging game-changing technologies in goods-to-person like Perfect Pick or AutoStore, which utilize robotics to deliver goods to people, with a unit sorter like t-Sort by Tompkins, which uses automated carts to sort products into their assigned orders, one person can pick and sort up to 1000 lines an hour. While another person, on the other side of the building, receives the presorted orders and runs them through a Packsize on-demand, right-sized packaging machine, which allows one person to pack 900-1000 cases an hour. Ideas like this can allow employees to remain at a safe distance from each other while producing more shipments per person than we ever thought possible until recently.
