Archives for February 14, 2018

Hollar deploys inVia Robotics mobile robots for warehouse operations

February 14, 2018 by Anna

Hollar has deployed inVia Robotics Picker robots and cloud-based Robotics-as-a-Service (RaaS) management system to streamline e-commerce fulfillment in its Los Angeles warehouse.

Hollar needed a cost-effective, collaborative mobile robotics platform to automate the goods-to-person fulfillment process. It will initially deploy 100 inVia Picker robots and scale as needed to address seasonal shopping and company growth.

The inVia Picker works collaboratively alongside Hollar’s human operators to pick and move items, automating the storage and retrieval process and minimizing operator risk exposure.

Cobots halt slide to overseas manufacturing

February 14, 2018 by Anna

The long-standing industrial practice of outsourcing manufacturing operations to low-cost parts of the world to keep manufacturing costs down has recently taken a turn.

A report from Boston Consulting Group has shown that ‘the share of executives saying that their companies are actively reshoring production increased by 9% since 2014 and by about 250% since 2012. This suggests that companies that were considering reshoring in the past three years are now taking action.’

With rapidly rising labour costs in traditional low-cost countries such as China, manufacturers are now experiencing that the financial advantages of manufacturing overseas are being seriously eroded.