Robotic lift trucks (RLTs) are growing in popularity for applications in warehousing and manufacturing, and for good reason.
With warehouse turnover well over 40%, operations are turning to robotics to relieve their dependency on a transient labor pool, reduce operating costs and help increase efficiency as they strive to meet escalating demand for high throughput and fast delivery.
While not every situation is right for robotics, the technology has advanced to accommodate a range of horizontal transportation and vertical storage tasks in many environments.
RLTs are especially well suited to handle repetitive tasks and long runs, a valuable characteristic warehouses can use in strategies to help curb operator turnover.
By shifting certain applications to robotics, companies can focus their employees on more engaging, valueadded tasks that require human judgement – leaving the non-stop, tedious, back-and-forth load moving to robotic lift trucks.
Automating transportation tasks can also play a role in limiting the chances of a safety incident, as it can avoid workflows that require employees to frequently traverse congested lift truck and pedestrian traffic areas.