Skechers chooses tote picking technology

THE SYSTEM has halved the amount of space needed to store close to 100,000 tote boxes and improved pick speeds and picking accuracy. The facility supplies replenishment stock to some 400 Chinese retail outlets and fulfils online orders directly to Skechers e-commerce customers across China.

AirRob travels horizontally and vertically on a lightweight frame that is fitted to the face of storage racking. Straightforward and cost effective to install, the frame infrastructure is compatible with all major racking brands, but the rack structure must be at least two metres high.

The scheme allows aisle width to be reduced to 0.85 metres. In operation, AirRob travels to its designated location within the storage scheme and automatically picks a tote. With the required box on board it returns to ground level and passes the tote on to a transfer robot, which delivers the tote box to a pickstation. The transfer bot then returns to the racking and passes the tote back to Airrob to be put away.

Skechers has a fleet of 450 Mini Yellow ground-level robots that ferry totes between the storage system and the workstations. The Skechers project is the single biggest application of AirRob to be undertaken since the system was launched in August 2023 and is the latest stage of a multi-phased upgrade of the entire facility

Skechers awarded LiBiao Robotics the contract after LiBiao designed and installed a split-level robotic parcel sorting system for an earlier phase of the logistics centre’s renovation.