Staples Canada has been offering next-day delivery for three decades — even before the office supplies retailer ventured into ecommerce. But that long history also meant that the fulfillment center technology Staples Canada used also was out of date — literally pen and paper, according to Paul Giamberardino, Chief Supply Chain Officer at Staples Canada. So as part of an overall supply chain transformation that included the adoption of the Manhattan Active warehouse management system, Staples Canada has deployed robotics in two fulfillment centers, with plans to expand the technology to three more sites this year — and the results have been dramatic.
The Locus Robotics robots, which are designed to “fetch” items from fulfillment center shelves and bring them to the human assembling each order, began providing benefits almost immediately after they were installed: “Our productivity nearly doubled, order quality improved 73% and training time dropped by 70%,” said Giamberardino in a presentation at the NRF Big Show in January. “The shorter training times mean that an employee can be productive [with the robots] within hours or even minutes,” he added.
The robot installations also were designed to take place quickly. “We didn’t have the luxury to shut down a fulfillment center for two months to reconfigure it, and we didn’t want to gut the facilities and reconfigure an entire warehouse,” said Giamberardino. “We wanted to augment with a light touch, and also work with our associates for a quick, easy implementation, and let them know that the robots would take away some of the heavy lifting and strain from their jobs.”
The first deployment, in a fulfillment center on Canada’s west coast in Vancouver, went smoothly: “We brought 19 robots onto the floor after a weekend off, and within hours associates were working with them,” said Giamberardino. “We wanted to create a positive momentum [with this initial deployment], and fortunately that was how it worked out.”
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The Big Test: Installing Robots in a High-Volume Ontario Fulfillment Center
The Vancouver installation went so smoothly that Staples Canada went big for its next phase: deploying robots in a fulfillment center near Toronto that serves the province of Ontario and is responsible for nearly 50% of the retailer’s delivery volume.
The technology in this center relied on a 28–year-old conveyor belt system that not only created a “noisy, hot, congested environment” but also “needed a lot of upkeep,” according to Giamberardino. To accommodate the new way of operating with the robots, it all had to go: “We had to rip out three miles of conveyor belts over a long weekend and then were able to turn on 50 bots on the first day, and by day four, we had 100% of the bots active on the floor,” he added.
Because the bots are now handling much of the reaching, lifting and carrying that humans previously had done, associates are experiencing less physical stress at their jobs. Giamberardino told the story of Rupa, a longtime fulfillment center worker who is featured in a video about the transformation. “She’s the ‘mother hen’ and wanted to know all about what was happening,” said Giamberardino. “The day after we implemented, I saw her again and she gave me a big hug. Later she said, ‘I love the bots but my chiropractor is unhappy, because I used to go to him every week, but I don’t see him anymore.’ I said, ‘I’m happy you’re happy, and I don’t care if your chiropractor is unhappy.’”
The rapid deployments have been helped by associate training that takes place in the employee’s language of choice. Staples Canada supports 31 different languages, and the Locus Robotics technology supports a total of 40 languages.
Are Robots also Headed to Staples Canada Stores?
Looking ahead, Giamberardino noted that Staples Canada has three additional fulfillment centers queued up for their robotics implementations this year. There could be even more use of robots, particularly since “we now have automation experts on our team,” he noted, adding that while robots are not currently being used in Staples Canada stores, “it’s only a matter of time when they could be used for cleaning and inventory management functions.”
Part of Giamberardino’s confidence about the future of robots at Staples Canada comes from the Robots-as-a-Service model that Locus Robotics uses, with the retailer essentially renting the robots from the provider: “It gives us flexibility to, for example, bring in additional bots for a busy season like back-to-school,” he said.
“These implementations have driven a better customer experience and a better employee experience — the latter of which was unintended, but we’re proud of it — and it has driven a tremendous amount of value for Staples Canada,” Giamberardino said.
