Thanks to their combined climbing and driving function, the ClimbBots operate on all horizontal and vertical paths in the warehouse. The roaming concept of the bot swarm ensures that each AMR can use all aisles and areas in the warehouse and access every container. If one of the bots breaks down, the other vehicles can take over its orders at any time. As SSI Schaefer integrates the control of the robots into the warehouse's order management system, all necessary picking steps can be optimally sequenced and, if necessary, batched. As a result, the time between order creation and container delivery is reduced to less than two minutes thanks to the ClimbBots. According to the company, the risk of picking errors is also close to zero.

High throughput in a confined space

Thanks to their compact design, the bots manage with 900 mm narrow aisles. Their maneuverability makes cross aisles superfluous. And the available space can be used in the best possible way: For example, up to 30,000 storage locations can be created on 1,000 m² of floor space in a 12-meter-high system. In such an environment, throughput rates of up to 4,000 containers per 1,000 m² per hour are possible. Depending on the picked contents, 200 to 800 bins per hour can be transported to the employee's picking workstation.

Wide range of use cases possible

"Until recently, semi-automated goods-to-person systems were primarily of interest to companies that could reliably forecast their picking processes. Those who wanted to invest in such solutions needed stable business development - usually over a period of seven to ten years," explains Markus Külken, VP Product Line Material Flow at SSI Schaefer. "RackBot System Elevate fundamentally changes this perspective: We combine powerful, proven standard components into a fully integrated overall solution with an extremely short payback period - in many cases less than one year. This not only lowers the barrier to entry, but also enables viable investment decisions for semi-automated warehouse solutions in the event of dynamic growth, seasonal fluctuations or an uncertain business situation."

Thanks to the scalability of RackBot System Elevate, a wide range of use cases are possible - from smaller rack storage systems with a few thousand bins to systems with six-figure bin quantities. This makes the offering suitable for entry-level semi-automated warehousing as well as for business cases involving the integration of goods-to-person solutions in fully automated large-scale systems with high performance requirements.
"We have decades of experience in the planning and construction of intralogistics systems. This means we can always offer our customers exactly the solution that meets their business objectives in the most sustainable way," explains Markus Külken. "This also applies to the goods-to-person environment, where our tried-and-tested miniload, shuttle and lift systems can be used alongside the new RackBot solutions, for example. The layout of a new system is ultimately determined by the customer's specific requirements."

Solution from different technologies

As general contractor, SSI Schaefer supplies all components of the RackBot System Elevate solution and controls all trades required to build a semi-automated picking warehouse. According to the automation experts, particular attention is paid to the integration of the robot controller with the order management system. It does not matter which software solution the customer has in mind. In addition, there are numerous other integration services such as the connection of incoming goods, distribution or production supply.

"Depending on customer requirements, we combine robots, racking systems, load types, workstations and IT environments to create high-performance complete solutions. As we offer the necessary technologies and services from a single source, the customer has a single point of contact for the entire system," concludes Markus Külken, emphasizing that support is provided by local service teams. "The result is picking systems that are quick to implement and grow, offering autonomous storage and retrieval of goods in different containers. This means that the RackBot systems can be ideally integrated into existing warehouse environments."