Kmart has selected Tompkins Robotics’ tSort solution, an autonomous mobile robot, for its New Zealand operations. The USA-based automation company tells MHD why the discount department store retailer chose this solution for its DCs.
Automation plays a large role in high volume, complex supply chains to improve key metrics in delivery speed, quality, accuracy, security, and total operating cost. Recent labour constraints, increasing consumer demands and expectations, e-commerce growth, SKU proliferation, and the need for data visibility and digital transformation have served as catalysts to expand automation within multiple industries, and most specifically within supply chains and fulfilment operations.
Advancements in technological innovations have fuelled the development of a newer generation of cutting-edge solutions that address both old and new challenges. These new solutions are shattering the barriers to business growth while offering much greater flexibility over traditional solutions within well-defined market segments such as retail, consumer products, and shipping.
In the past, only very large organisations with access to strategic capital, advanced business strategies, and multi-year outlooks were able to invest in automation at Distribution & Fulfilment (D&F) operations. Typically, those investments were only seen at the large and scalable, high-volume grocery, pharma, and retail operations.
Leveraging industry-leading mobile robotic automation has grown to cover many applications and areas in the D&F space and offer scale and mobility unavailable with traditional solutions.
In businesses involving manual picking, sorting, and packaging operations, it is estimated that operators spend half of their total time travelling inside large warehouses. With the simple principle of eliminating travel through robotic sorting technology, one can see how easy it is to materialise savings and enhance performance.
Tompkins Robotics’ tSort s*stems are renowned for their affordability, flexibility, and scalability. A tSort s*stem is also lower investment, requires less space and deploys quicker when compared to other automated s*stems. tSort is often paired with its own execution software that is easily integrated with other higher-level ERP/WMS software in a D&F operation.
“The entire concept of tSort is to redefine item and case sortation to allow operations to have a 100 per cent modular, scalable, configurable, and portable robotic solution to process goods to orders,” says Mike Futch, CEO of Tompkins Robotics.
MOBILE ROBOTS BENEFITTING RETAIL
With many options available, it is important for leaders to carefully consider two factors: identify the right solution for their business and partner with the right vendor to deliver.
In the case of Wesfarmers-owned department store Kmart, continued growth in their business along with the desire to be flexible within their operation necessitated evaluating new technologies to pilot and implement in their New Zealand D&F hub.
Kmart is a much loved and trusted retailer that has more than 300 stores in Australia and New Zealand (ANZ) and employs more than 44,000 team members.
With a network of D&F operations across ANZ, supply chain leaders were looking for a cost-effective solution that could increase their facility throughput, reduce the labour gap, and provide modularity to be transferred between facilities as needed to accommodate varying demand in their distributed logistics network.
The network delivers to high-volume stores with a wide product mix and unique product handling requirements for case, inner pack, and item sortation to meet the annual and seasonal demand of the Kmart store network.
“The challenge was to find a cost-effective solution that improved safety and increased throughput in our NZ facility to support our growing store network and volume,” explains Dean Goulding, Kmart Head of Assets, DC Design and Automation.
PROVIDING THE RIGHT SOLUTION
Seeking a best-in-class automation solution and through a detailed RFP process, Kmart ultimately selected Tompkins Robotics’ tSort s*stem. The award-wining AMR solution optimises fulfilment operations and provides a wealth of benefits for retail replenishment, including:
High throughput: Sort s*stems facilitate high volume rates in a modular fashion to allow Kmart to scale the solution to fit the operation.
Rapid deployment: a typical tSort implementation takes less than half the time of traditional sortation s*stems. This allows for faster installation between peak seasons for minimal disruption to Kmart’s operations.
Low capital investment: tSort solutions are approximately half the cost of large tilt trays or crossbelt sorters, and additional robots and assets can be installed as needed to grow a s*stem. This feature means you buy what you need as you need it – which postpones capital investment and allows complete utilisation of all assets.
Scalable & Portable: The tSort solution is fully modular, configurable, and portable. Further, all elements and robots can be easily added, removed, or relocated at any time to meet changing demands and business requirements. This portable design enables to “lift and shift” the s*stems to accommodate an evolving distribution network.
Wide range of capabilities and applications: As a general merchandiser, Kmart has a wide range of products and varying packaging. tSort can process a wide variety of products and packages in many different environments and applications, including polybags, cartons, loose items, and many more product configurations.
Higher capacity in a smaller footprint: tSort’s multi-level design can process more than double the volume in less than 25 per cent of the space of traditional sortation s*stems.
Flexible and Robust Warehouse Execution S*stem: tSort is powered by the cloud-based Tompkins Warehouse Execution S*stem (tWES) and has 20 years of experience in integrating automated solutions to a variety of WMSs.
AUTOMATING OPERATIONS
Tompkins Robotics’ tSort solution was installed, tested, and commissioned utilising mostly remote resources in the midst of the COVID pandemic, and has successfully supported the operation since go-live in May 2021.
The results for Kmart have been exceptional, including but not limited to the following:
- Supports the reduction in manual handling activities on site.
- Increased throughput to meet store growth and volume.
- Improved inventory accuracy.
- Achieved more than 60 per cent reduction in space over traditional solutions.
- The start of installation to go-live was less than five months, with an operational ramp-up to full production in just a few weeks.
- An improved financial outcome for the business.
“Tompkins’s customer-first approach is refreshing and leads to the team constantly challenging the status quo,” says Dean.
“The team effort and great attitude led to an extremely positive customer experience. The project team embedded themselves in the working operation, which allowed for a seamless transition.”
Thompson Brockmann, EVP Operations with Tompkins Robotics adds: “The Tompkins Robotics and Kmart teams came together to apply this exciting technology for a set of requirements and challenges that would have been difficult to meet with traditional automated solutions.”
For more information on Tompkins Robotics, click here.