Milton CAT and Vecna Robotics announced today that the Massachusetts distribution center for Milton CAT, the leading provider of Caterpillar machine parts and services has successful integrated robotic lift truck technology into its operations. Vecna Robotics is a leader in next-generation, robotic, material-handling automatic ground vehicles (AGVs) and produces a full line of robots including the RL3600 lift truck.The deployment has allowed Milton CAT to achieve its goals of finding affordable and advanced automation to improve fulfillment speed and optimize workflows for its 15-acre, 87,000-square-foot Milford parts operation that houses 220,000-line items.
“We sought robotic AGV integration primarily to improve customer service and reduce customer response time, but also to improve the employee experience and operations safety,” said Mike Erskine, Corporate Distribution Manager of the Milton CAT Milford distribution center. “This is the first step in a path to increasing the efficiency and automation in our processes, and Vecna Robotics is helping us achieve this with a scalable solution that will enable us to introduce more robots in a gated, progressive manner”
Vecna Robotics’ next-generation material-handling fleet provides highly scalable automation solutions that can be incrementally deployed alongside existing manual vehicles and have proven to be highly cost effective. They are designed and certified to operate safely around humans in dynamic environments, allowing for maximum flexibility and productivity. Robots can be used for precision movement of boxes, totes, cases, carts, shelves, bins, pallets, non-conveyables, and heavy, oversized SKUs.
Erskine initially estimated a Return on Investment (ROI) within two years. However, performance has far exceeded expectations, “It’s easy to see that we will achieve that return much sooner,” he said, “plus, there is what I refer to as the hidden ROI. You can’t put a value or number on being able to get parts to a customer in a much shorter time frame or the reduction of physical wear on employees that were manually moving these parts back and forth.”
About Vecna Robotics
Vecna Robotics is dedicated to helping companies better compete in today’s e-commerce driven environment with cost-effective automation that improves throughput in distribution and fulfillment. Its fleet of intelligent, next-generation robotic vehicles and AGV optimizes logistics and material-handling operations and work seamlessly alongside humans. With two decades of extensive research and development, Vecna’s case picking, goods-to-person, person-to-goods, robot-conveyor hybrid material handling systems are proven in the most challenging environments.
Vecna Robotics is a subsidiary of Vecna Technologies, which was founded in 1998 in Cambridge, Mass. with a mission to empower humanity through transformative technologies. The company is dedicated to corporate citizenship and has donated more than 170,000 hours of community service, and team members spend up to 10 percent of their paid work week on a community service project. For more information visit robotics.vecna.com or contact info@vecna.com.