New robots at Flipkart sort out 5000 parcels an hour

One of the largest India eCommerce platforms, Flipkart has now revealed India first robot based sortation technology, at its sortation facility in the Bangalore. These robots can quickly sort the 5000 parcels every hour, as around 450 parcels were sorted by the human being in the same sort of time.

These AGV charge themselves automatically after their battery gets drain out. “The throughput which these (robots) are providing is almost 10x of what we would have achieved. These robots talk to each other in real time, whether it is to (prevent) collision or for workload distribution,” Pranav Saxena, Vice-President, Robotics and Automation at Flipkart told Business Standard.

Around 100 robots have been introduced in the Sortation Centre in Bangalore, and they are being seen as a milestone in the field of automation.

“The Automated Guided Vehicles help bring efficiencies, agility, and scale to the supply chain operations, helping us serve the customer better. This India-first initiative is the first stepping stone in this journey,” Krishna Raghavan, Senior Vice President of eKart Tech at Flipkart said.

The 1000 employees of the facility now being able to manage the millions of shipments every day and they have also been trained to operate the AGV’s. These robots can also drive up the efficiency in the facility by more than 60% and process around 4500 shipments in an hour, according to the report which has been revealed by the team conduct team.

This may also help the Flipkart in advancing some other services like the speedy deliveries and customer experience. It would also be assumed that this type of automation will soon remove the manual jobs. Moreover, the company said that its employees can now be upskilled and add some other value to the company.