TGW: Robotic Warehousing

Markus Sturm, CSO & COO

In the past few years, the need for automation in warehousing has increased significantly, and the reason behind this need is two-fold. First is the drop in the availability of workforce to perform tedious tasks of lifting and loading and the second remains reliability. With fast paced innovation and development in robotics, automation has expanded the scope of warehousing significantly. TGW dives into warehousing automation with its economical robotics solutions. The firm caters to companies like Tognum and Amazon by implementing robotic applications into their distribution centers reducing their labor content. The company, with its robotics technologies, assists clients in stock-taking, controlled manual and automated goods movement, and picking and dispatching goods.

Most of the warehousing activities across industries continue to take place with human effort, but with increasing minimum wages, implementation of robotic solutions has been highly beneficial for distribution centers. Another key reason behind automation, as explained by Markus Sturm, CSO & COO of TGW is, “People tend to get tired and make mistakes which are reduced with a machine-based system, creating a better ROI for our customers.” The robots employed by TGW primarily perform activities ranging from collecting to storing the goods by moving them around as per the need. The secondary function is order-picking, wherein the robots are responsible for pallet sizing as well as picking a single article out of a stack to be shipped out.

TGW mainly focuses on the core markets of grocery, retail, and e-commerce with an aim to do layer-palletizing and de-palletizing

TGW mainly focuses on the core markets of grocery, retail, and e-commerce with an aim to do layer-palletizing and de-palletizing. Due to the rapid development in e-commerce, TGW aims to provide faster delivery of articles ranging from a single piece to huge quantities. The company provides its clients with grippers and designs the solutions to address their warehousing needs, not restricting to specific grippers from specific vendors. Their solutions are derived from a wide range of portfolios based on the business requirements of clients. This serves as one of their strengths as TGW ensures to find an optimum solution to solve their client’s business problem. This process however depends a lot on the clients as they are asked to choose from a range of solutions that are designed specifically to apply to the client’s business model. Once the solution is finalized, the robotic application products devised thereafter are tested for application. TGW assures a flawless and quick implementation in order to achieve optimum client experience. The clients are provided with full-service on-site teams which conduct inspection and maintenance of the robots, which are also taught the characteristics of a new product in case of a change in the client portfolio.

The company has also been providing palletizing and de-palletizing applications to grocery retailers with the help of robotic solutions in deep-freeze environment. As humans cannot work in such an environment, implementing robotic solutions not only eases the workflow but also completes the work more efficiently. This proves to be a big driver for implementing robotic technology in that environment. The company, to address varied warehousing requirements of businesses, employs its software suite designed exclusively for warehousing, which manages everything from maintaining the overview of the stock, optimizing the material flow to shipping goods. This suite delivers and calculates the pattern of palletizing further facilitating the warehousing.

With presence in the US, Japan, and Western Europe, where businesses employ robotics due to high minimum wages, TGW further hopes to expand into other countries. Despite robotics hovering over major warehousing activities, there still remain areas where human effort cannot be replaced. However, TGW is working towards developing robotics in more areas to replace effort to the maximum extent.