Feature a great solution for us that’s driving val- ue and they’re definitely who we want to work with for this fulfillment centre. “GreyOrange robotics are really help- ing our picking productivity. The robots themselves will be presenting prod- ucts to associates to pick and will be storing all the products. They replace traditional racking with mobile racking. So it will eliminate the need for asso- ciates to travel all the way through the warehouse, up and down aisles, to pick product. They now get to be in a small- er zone where the robots actually come to them and present the items to them. “GreyOrange is doing that from a storage and presentation perspective of items and they’re also doing de-sorta- tion, (when) the end state as product is typically sorted on a conveyor to go to Canada Post or Purolator or anything like that for final-mile delivery. Instead of a conveyor, we’re using the robots to do the sortation.” Barber said the robotic technology will allow staff at the facility to have a better work/life balance because they won’t have to travel as much as they do now. The company is cutting some of the unproductive moves the workers had to do and things they didn’t want to do. They didn’t want to spend their time walking around a facility. The use of ro- bots will make it much easier for them to do their work. Speeding up the processes of picking up items quicker, with the robots com- ing to the workers, will also drive the retailer’s costs down. “As we drive our costs down, we get to pass that savings along to the cus- tomer,” explained Barber, adding that there will eventually be about 500 ro- bots at the site when it is operating at full tilt. “One of the key factors for this type of solution is that it’s very scalable. So we have the ability to flex up and down as needed with the amount of robots that we put in the site. It’s pretty exciting for this space because we technically need a bigger footprint overall for the facility but we’re actually going to build a sec- ond level in that facility. It will have a mezzanine and it will be two levels of robotics in that site.” The Calgary area facility will create about 325 new jobs. Walmart believes that using robotics technology will help attract and retain employees as it will make workers’ jobs easier. “That’s huge. Absolutely massive in today’s environment,” said Barber. “There’s definitely plans to continue expansion. We’ve got to see how it plays out right, so there’s more announce- ments to come. That’s for sure.” GreyOrange, based in Atlanta, is a global leader in automated robot- ic fulfillment and inventory optimization software. The company, which was founded about 10 years ago, has many major retail brands as clients. “Our fulfillment platform revolutioniz- es how the largest and best-known retail brands in the world, such as Walmart and H&M, fulfil their promises to cus- tomers, employees and shareholders,” said Samay Kohli, co-founder and CEO of GreyOrange. “As e-commerce sales soar, brands face a stark reality: embrace automation or cede customers to the competition. We orchestrate fulfillment and optimize inventory in a complex global supply chain environment for more companies that ship millions of items each day than any other player in the market outside of Amazon.” Kohli said the company name stands for two values. Grey is about grey hair and experience. Orange is for creativity and having fun. They are the core ele- ments of the company’s culture. He said the company has worked with Walmart globally for more than two years and the relationship with Walmart Canada is new. He added that 85 per cent of GreyOrange’s business comes from companies which have more than $5 billion in annual revenue. “We are actually in the robot enable- ment business for supply chain and retailers. So, we specifically focus on brands and retailers in North America and Western Europe on how they use robots to be useful on a large scale,” he said. “Outside Amazon, some of the largest sites in the world are actually run by GreyOrange with these brands and retailers.” Samay Kohli CEO, GreyOrange The GreyOrange fulfillment platform, which integrates across every node in a retailer’s fulfillment network, provides adaptive learning and continuous pro- cess automation with high resiliency as well as an ecosystem for third-party soft- ware, robotics and hardware application development, said the company. It added that GreyMatter software uses machine learning insights to orchestrate fulfillment operations for the most efficient move- ment of inventory in a fully integrated, end-to-end solution. GreyOrange so- lutions can be installed in as little as 12 weeks to rapidly transform fulfillment with minimal disruption to operations, it said. Kohli said retailers are increasing- ly using robotic automation and the company’s fulfillment platform equips retailers to fulfil high-volume e-com- merce orders seven times faster and with 50 per cent less physical effort. The retail industry has traditionally had very transient labour, he said. Most warehouses have anywhere between 2,000 to 3,000 per cent attrition rates. The average worker has a tenure of four to five weeks in a warehouse. Kohli said every $1 billion that moves from retail stores to e-commerce fulfill- ment adds about 1.3 million square feet and about 1,000 jobs. “This industry has been needing more and more people much faster than e- commerce is growing, but it’s a force which has very transient labour,” he said. SUPPLY CHAIN CANADA • ISSUE 2 2022 • 15
