Warehouse tech vendors say combined platforms can automate fulfillment

As a pandemic e-commerce boom and labor shortages continue to accelerate the rollout of fulfillment automation technologies, two warehouse tech vendors are aligning their platforms to achieve more as a team than they could by working alone.

The Pittsburgh-based warehouse automation vendor IAM Robotics will work with Raleigh, North Carolina-based Tompkins Robotics to create a new robotic application that automates the exit process of order fulfillment, the partners said Tuesday.

The combined system adds IAM’s xChange platform and Atlas autonomous mobile robot (AMR) model to Tompkins’ t-Sort system, autonomously removing completed order containers from sortation and replacing them with empty order containers.

That approach will help companies draw closer to experiencing human-free automated sortation, thus automating the order fulfillment exit process cutting both costs and labor requirements, the partners said. “This collaboration combines the strengths of both companies to put the final puzzle piece together to maximize fulfillment automation for our industry,” Mike Futch, CEO and president of Tompkins Robotics, said in a release.