GXO claims ‘industry-first’ innovation to outbound process with autonomous mobile robots

GXO Logistics, which says it is “the world’s largest pure-play contract logistics provider”, has marked the success of its “industry-first” use of Lowpad’s Autonomous Mobile Robots (AMRs) for a customer in the food and beverage sector at a major warehouse facility in the Netherlands.

Luc Laurijssens, GXO’s managing director for Belgium and the Netherlands, says: “GXO’s industry-first collaboration with Lowpad on a custom-designed and engineered automated solution for our customer’s outbound process has significantly improved efficiency.

“By deploying Lowpad AMRs that are fully linked to our Warehouse Management and Electronic Data Interchange systems, we’re enhancing accuracy, efficiency and quality for our customer, while easing the strain of a tight labor market and reducing costs.

“We’re looking forward to applying the success of this installation in the Netherlands to our other warehouses in all sectors.”

Approximately two years ago, GXO began working with a major food and beverage retailer to optimize the outbound process at its state-of-the-art facility in Nieuwegein.

The temperature-controlled site, which operates 24/7, needed a solution that would place orders in the right sequence to be loaded onto specific trucks and to be placed on those trucks in the optimal arrangement for unloading at their destinations.

The introduction of “Lowpads” at 16 pick-up points in the outbound process, the first such implementation in the food and beverage industry, brought significant increases in safety, productivity, quality and cost-effectiveness for the customer.

Jan Bakker, CEO of Lowpad, says: “We are delighted to partner with GXO to help its customer optimize their warehouse performance. Lowpad specializes in designing automated solutions for intralogistics processes.

“Our solutions comprise a fleet of Lowpads, intuitive software and high-tech process equipment such as the I-transfer. Combining GXO’s vast experience and industry-leading expertise with our advanced technology and know-how is making warehouses safer, more productive and more efficient.”

GXO designs and operates some of the most advanced warehouse solutions in the world. Technology is a core competitive advantage for GXO, enabling it to add value to our customers’ end-to-end operations in terms of cost, efficiency, accuracy, and environmental impact.

An early adopter of technology, today GXO operates roughly 22 percent more tech-enabled warehouses than the market average.