Bowe Intralogistics and Plus One Robotics Partner

BOWE Intralogistics and Plus One Robotics, two innovators in the intralogistics market, announced a collaboration at ProMat Chicago that will enable customers to seamlessly combine Plus One Robotics’ industry-leading parcel induction systems with BOWE’s innovative line of parcel sorting solutions that are widely deployed in the e-commerce fulfilment and parcel delivery markets.

One of the most difficult jobs in today’s logistics environment is handling the tonnage of parcels that are manually inducted into sortation systems. This problem is more acute during peak periods where it is even more critical that automation assets such as sorters achieve their maximum efficiency and throughput. Plus One’s induction systems automate the task of “feeding” or “inducting” parcels into the sorter. Plus One’s induction systems can be readily integrated into existing BOWE sorters or bundled in the sale of new sorting systems. Further, BOWE IQ’s Warehouse Management Software (WMS) can help integrate the data and workflows between these complementary solutions.

Plus One provides the industry’s fastest and most reliable parcel-handling robotics platform. With more than 700 million picks in production, Plus One’s solutions are utilized by some of the world’s largest parcel-post and e-commerce companies. Plus One’s innovative AI-powered software with unique end-of-arm grippers provides the perception and manipulation necessary to pick and place parcels. Key to Plus One’s effectiveness is its unparalleled approach to human-in-the-loop software. Remote or on-premise employees can supervise multiple robots from any location, speeding the robot’s ability to handle exceptions, enabling 24/7 operations. This approach improves productivity and provides ergonomic benefits to the laborious task of feeding parcels.

“We are excited to announce this non-exclusive partnership with BOWE INTRALOGISTICS,” said Robert Nilsson, Chief Revenue Officer at Plus One. “While our solutions can be implemented independently as an upgrade or as part of a total system offering, our collaboration with BOWE helps ensure a seamless integration between BOWE INTRALOGISTICS’s sorters and Plus One’s induction systems, thus yielding the maximum possible efficiency gain for our mutual customers.”

“BOWE INTRALOGISTICS is embracing robots to make our existing solutions more effective,” said Joachim Koschier, Managing Director of the BOWE GROUP. “We will do this by providing turnkey solutions incorporating Plus One’s robotic induction systems to dramatically lower manual labour and increase throughputs. For high-volume operators, our portfolio of sorters offers the best return and maximum facility throughputs.”

John Lombard, President of BOWE USA & CANADA, added: “At ProMat, we showcased our parcel sorting products and our Autonomous Mobile Robot (AMR) solutions that automate the movement of products, parcels and the like, to and from the sorter, thus offering additional productivity gains. We expect that the combination of the Plus One induction systems and BOWE AMRs can reduce operating labour requirements on our sorters by over 50%, more during peak periods while increasing hourly capacity and throughput.”

“Together, Plus One and BOWE are providing a unique solution that delivers higher throughput rates and lower operational costs for warehouses and distribution centres,” said Erik Nieves, Chief Executive Office at Plus One. “We are thrilled to bring these versatile technologies to shared customers.”

Funding Raised to Capitalize on $128bn Market

Plus One Robotics, a provider of advanced AI vision software and solutions for robotic parcel handling, today announced that it has raised $50M in Series C funding. The round was led by Scale Venture Partners, with Partner Rory O’Driscoll joining the board of directors. Top Tier Capital Partners, Tyche Partners, ROBO Global Ventures, Translink, McRock, and Pritzker Group Venture Capital also participated in the round alongside existing investors, which brings the company’s total funding to date to nearly $100 million. Plus One’s technology helps to alleviate the persistent shortage of manual labour through robotic solutions, dramatically streamlining the parcel picking and depalletizing processes. Plus One deployments perform over one million parcel picks each day in production and currently hold an industry-leading metric of more than half a billion parcel picks globally. With these new funds, Plus One can further increase its capacity and rapidly scale deployment, as well as expand its sales and marketing efforts in North America and internationally.

This expansion builds on Plus One Robotics’ existing relationships with customers in the parcel post, logistics, and general merchandise industries, serving customers that include FedEx, MSC Industrial, and many more.

The Labour Problem

“The labour shortage is hitting the shipping industry hard, and parcel picking is an often overlooked yet essential part of the process,” said Scale Partner Rory O’Driscoll. “By automating the parcel handling piece, Plus One Robotics is rapidly modernizing an outdated system that’s no longer sustainable. It is stepping up and leading the way in a $128 billion market, with fundamentals that prove its value.”

Ecommerce has grown to represent 19% of U.S. retail sales, with approximately 20 billion parcels delivered in the U.S. in 2021. Shipping growth is expected to rise by 25% over the next five years resulting in warehouses and distribution centers not having the workforce to keep up.

On the supply side, over 80% of warehouses are manual, and with the demands placed on shipping expected to grow, there will be over 1 million more jobs to fill by 2025 despite the shrinking of available labour sources – and costs are rising. Labour costs average $25 per hour and continue to increase. This creates a perfect storm threatening the supply chain and impeding future e-commerce growth.

“The growth of e-commerce has placed tremendous pressure on shipping responsiveness and scalability that has significantly exacerbated labour and capacity issues,” said Erik Nieves, CEO and co-founder of Plus One Robotics. “Automation is key, but keeping a human-in-the-loop is essential to running a business 24/7 with greater speed and fewer errors. With the ongoing labour shortages, I believe we’ll see an increase in the adoption of Robots-as-a-Service (RaaS) to lower capital expenditures and deploy automation on a subscription basis. This new funding will help us scale up and meet the need for these solutions.”

Plus One Robotics’ solutions employ award-winning AI-powered software with unique end-of-arm robot grippers that provide the perception and manipulation necessary to pick and place parcels. Key to Plus One Robotics’ effectiveness is its unparalleled approach to human-in-the-loop software. Employees, remote or on-premises, can supervise multiple robots from any location, speeding the robot’s ability to handle exceptions, enabling 24/7 operations. Users benefit from improved sorting and picking throughput by >30% while decreasing operational costs.

Plus One has experienced nearly three-times year-over-year growth from expanded business with existing customers and new deployments. Additionally, it has increased its adoption of the human-in-the-loop capability and RaaS offering among its parcel and post, third-party logistics (3PL), and general merchandise customers. Plus One deployments perform over one million parcel picks each day in production and currently hold an industry-leading metric of more than half a billion parcel picks globally.

Subscribe

Get notified about New Episodes of our Podcast, New Magazine Issues and stay updated with our Weekly Newsletter.