Robotic Piece-Picking Systems for the Pharmaceutical Supply Chain

Supply chains across disparate industries have endured turbulent times in recent years. From COVID-19 to an ongoing labor shortage, companies must remain resilient, offer an increasing slate of customer-centric digital services, and find new ways to keep products flowing to their customers. This is particularly important in the healthcare and pharmaceutical spaces — which include related industries such as pharmaceutical wholesalers, chain drug stores, online pharmacies, and medical supplies firms — where a failure to do so could impact lives.

Today, advanced automation technologies such as robots, machine vision, and AI software provide a path to ease such challenges. Combined, these technologies create automated systems that can be configured to perform specific tasks in a variety of warehouse operations, delivering value by addressing labor challenges and ensuring customers timely access to critical healthcare products and services over many years.

The pharmaceutical space has been quick to adopt automated order fulfillment. Despite shrinking labor pools, companies must find ways to keep up with surging online orders, offer more customer-centric digital services, and respond to mandates and regulations — such as for e-prescriptions across the EU — all while getting customers the products they need in a timely manner. Robotic piece-picking offers an automated, effective method for minimizing economic impact while keeping goods flowing out the door as part of an overall path toward a digitized supply chain.

Download this paper to learn if a robotic picking system is ready to go to work in your warehouse.