Robotics: the next distribution centre revolution

Axium inc.

November 05, 2010 — Montréal, Quebec

Many warehouses and distribution centers (DC) have automation in their facility; usually companies automate their production plants instead. Today’s typical DC still builds orders manually, a labor intensive method that enables mistakes.

Robert Jodoin and his team can improve this situation dramatically.  A combination of strong mix palletizing software and robots will fully solve logistical challenges of manually building orders.  As president of Axium, a Montréal-based company and provider of complete turnkey robotic solutions, he is well placed to turn that vision into reality.

Axium’s strongest expertise is robotic palletizing. Competition in this market will become very stiff over the next two years as multinational giants seek to lead the way.  With only about 100 employees, Jodoin insists that Axium can set a new standard in this demanding market.

“We’re not a small player, but we’re not a huge player either,” he says. “We could handle fairly interesting projects in terms of size, and fairly complex ones. The way we’re structured internally, we have all the expertise from different fields starting with a strong mechanical and electrical design team, fully support by controls, IT and industrial engineering.  So we could well serve a client for a mid-size project (1M to 6M$) since they will not necessarily go knocking at the door of these multinational players.”

In fact, Axium has found such clients over the past few years.  Early in prototype development, Proctor and Gamble purchased a complete mix palletizing solution – one of the first fully operational systems of its kind. More recently, Axium has signed a partnership with a large equipment manufacturer in Australia and carried out more prototype testing with customers.

Jodoin credits much of this progress to the company’s collaboration with the National Research Council’s Industrial Research Assistance Program (NRC-IRAP). This agency works closely with small and medium-sized enterprises, helping them to grow their businesses, to increase their competitiveness, and to enhance their impact in the marketplace.

Since 2004, Axium has worked closely with NRC-IRAP Industrial Technology Advisor (ITA) Jean-Claude Brisson, whose specialties include automation and robotics.  He initiated a market survey that revealed there were only few other firms capable of serving this wide and underserved market.  Subsequently, Axium continued to improve mix palletizing software and started to develop the next generation of high speed mix robotic palletizers to meet this need.

“The support of the ITA has been very valuable to our success,” says Jodoin. “NRC-IRAP’s financial support has been crucial in the realization of our mix palletizing development project.”

Today, Axium can demonstrate a full mix palletizing operation in its shop.  A client can send 7-8 dozens of cases (of different sizes) to Axium. On a screen, the client selects the number of cases of each size to build an order. Within 10 seconds, the system automatically builds a pallet with these cases!

“Our business comes from how much time and money can be saved in a warehouse”, explains Jodoin.  “The potential is huge, and the barrier to get in is high. It’s not only having expertise in robotics, or designing equipment or using software, it’s a multidisciplinary expertise where you first need to analyze the client’s data to figure out the best match of technologies you need to make it work.”