What Is Team Intelligence?
As businesses grow, the complexity and volume of tasks in warehouses and fulfillment centers increase. Team Intelligence provides a scalable solution that can easily adapt to growing operational demands without a proportional increase in labor costs. Team Intelligence is an automation workflow in the Zebra Symmetry™ Fulfillment solution that unlocks higher levels of efficiency and productivity by maximizing the performance of both humans and robots working collaboratively.
Zebra Symmetry software receives order information from the WMS and assigns work to teams of pickers and robots. Pickers are guided by wearable devices that allow them to leverage multiple autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) in a precise, optimized path. AMRs pre-position themselves where and when they are needed, ensuring that the right robot is exactly where the worker needs it to be for each pick. The result is a true team approach that maximizes pick density and productivity.
How Can Team Intelligence Improve Productivity in AMR Fleets?
Most AMR fleets prioritize robots over human workers. With Team Intelligence, you get a more balanced solution that optimizes your cost per unit picked by boosting the throughput, accuracy and efficiency of people and robots.
Here’s a more detailed breakdown of how the Team Intelligence workflow operates:
- Wearable Devices for Pickers: Workers are equipped with wearable devices that provide real-time direction, helping them navigate and perform their tasks more efficiently.
- Optimized Pick Path Guidance: The wearable devices not only provide instructions but also guide pickers on an optimized path through the warehouse. This reduces unnecessary movement and ensures that workers can complete their tasks in the shortest possible times.
- Integration With AMRs: AMRs are used to transport goods within the warehouse. These robots are programmed to move between different points, aligning themselves so that they are always in the right place at the right time to assist the pickers.
- Point-to-Point Coordination: The system helps ensure that AMRs are precisely positioned where they are needed for each pick. This point-to-point coordination minimizes the time workers spend waiting for robots and maximizes the efficiency of both human and robotic resources.
- Enhanced Efficiency and Productivity: By combining human intelligence and adaptability with the precision and reliability of AMRs, the Team Intelligence workflow can help boost overall productivity. Workers can focus on tasks that require human dexterity and decision-making, while robots handle repetitive and physically demanding tasks.
- Scalability and Flexibility: The Team Intelligence system can be scaled up or down based on demand. It’s flexible enough to adapt to different facility layouts, workflows, order profiles, existing upstream and downstream systems, and picking team sizes — making it a versatile solution for a wide range of end users.
- Empowering Human Workers: Despite the high level of automation, the system is designed to support and enhance the capabilities of human workers, rather than replace them. This ensures that technology acts as an enabler, allowing workers to perform their tasks more effectively and with less physical strain.
By leveraging these elements, Team Intelligence helps create a highly efficient and productive workflow that benefits from the strengths of both human workers and advanced AMRs.
How Does Team Intelligence Compare to “Swarm-Based” Picking?
Swarm systems work by coordinating a group of AMRs to collectively perform a task. The robots make decisions as a swarm. Although swarm environments allow robots to divide work and adapt to changes, they’re notoriously chaotic and confusing for human workers. Because swarm environments use a zone-based strategy, the allocation of work is often unbalanced, leading to underutilized humans and/or robots. And, a Swarm solution often relies on reaching critical mass with robots, or in some cases, adding extra robots to a system, even when efficiencies are impaired.
Team Intelligence overcomes these challenges by helping pickers and robots work more efficiently. The workflow is more precise and typically requires fewer robots, maximizing utilization. Wearable technology provides the picker with a clear, directed workflow that identifies each robot they need to interact with. AMR travel is also optimized to ensure the right robot is in the ideal location when the picker arrives.
How Does Team Intelligence Compare To “Follow Me” Picking Strategies?
“Follow me” AMRs are designed for a single picker, where the picker follows the robot and can only interact with one robot at a time. As a result, throughput is limited by the robot’s speed. Mediocre workers have no incentive to be more productive; and those with higher throughput potential are held back.
By contrast, Team Intelligence enables a “one-to-many” workflow that makes the most effective use of pickers and robots. This boosts the speeds of average workers while enabling your most efficient pickers to be even more productive.
How Much Training Is Needed?
Team Intelligence is designed to be simple and intuitive, allowing a typical operator to learn it in just a few minutes. A durable, lightweight wearable computer directs the picker to the precise location. The worker then uses a ring scanner to scan the shelf or rack, the item(s) picked and confirm the put location on the robot. This streamlined process reduces training time while enhancing efficiency and accuracy in picking operations.
Can Team Intelligence Help Us Attract and Retain More Qualified Workers?
Yes. More than 80% of warehouse associates say they feel more valued when their employers add collaborative automation. Further, 88% of fulfillment industry decision-makers agree that cutting-edge robotics technology can help attract, onboard and retain workers more effectively.
Workers enjoy partnering with AMRs because they boost personal units per hour (UPH) with less walking and effort. Wearable instructions reduce the strain of constant decision-making by breaking pick tasks and walking instructions into segments. Operators also gain agency from the ability to report exceptions, such as items that are too high to reach or too large to fit into the assigned bin, which the system uses to refine upcoming picking tours.
How Does Zebra’s Team Intelligence Reduce Cost per Unit?
Team Intelligence helps you economize without compromise in three ways:
- Zebra AMRs accelerate the picking workflow by eliminating long walks from picking aisles to loading and/or induction points, traveling at twice the speed of leading AMR competitors.
- The Zebra Symmetry Fulfillment platform coordinates picker and robotic paths to streamline in-aisle navigation, reducing the distance between picks while ensuring operators stay on task. Workers always know where to go and what to do next, even when the team of robots is in motion.
- Only Zebra accelerates shelf picks with durable wearables optimized for warehouse efficiency. This unique advantage enables the fastest AMR-assisted picking in the industry, maximizes your WMS investment, and eliminates redundant costs.
How Does Zebra Symmetry Assist Warehouse Managers?
The Zebra Symmetry Command Center gives decision-making and visibility back to operations leaders. Work can be prioritized quickly based on changing conditions, backed by real-time tracking of every picker, robot, tote and order. Fulfillment analytics deliver valuable insights into the system and picking operation, from current metrics to historical trends that can identify bottlenecks and improve future performance.
Zebra Symmetry provides the strategic oversight and real-time data necessary for making informed decisions. With Zebra’s Team Intelligence, you can execute decisions at the operational level by optimizing the workflows of human workers and robots, leading to a highly efficient and responsive warehouse environment.
