The number and variety of products available to e-commerce consumers have expanded dramatically. With this change comes an increasing number of goods received by retailers and e-commerce operations as mixed-SKU pallets. The processes of breaking down these pallets and placing their contents into storage or a warehouse automation system are common operational bottlenecks.

Until recently, mixed-SKU pallets have been particularly challenging for warehouse robots to handle. While humans can easily deal with unstructured and ever-changing tasks like unloading a random assortment of items, robotic programming has taken a while to catch up. However, major improvements in three key technologies are overcoming traditional challenges:

1. Advances in vision and perception
2. Development of sophisticated machine learning
3. Innovation in gripping technology

Together, these breakthroughs are driving fully automated solutions capable of meeting or exceeding the throughput of manual operations.

Download the white paper for a highlight of the significant benefits these robotic, mixed-SKU depalletizers have to offer modern DCs and other fulfillment operations and explore the increasingly attractive business case for implementing these solutions.