In this episode, I was joined by the CEO and Founder of inVia Robotics, Lior Elazary. You may remember Lior from our MODEX series last year on Episode 60 where we discussed the origins of inVia Robotics and how the landscape of robotics in the material handling industry has changed so dramatically. One thing that stuck out to me from our conversation was how the inVia solution does inventory control so in this episode Lior and I dive deeper into that discussion.

Warehouse Safety Tip! – You will also notice that we are trying something new on this episode with the guest giving a warehouse safety tip in the beginning. Please let me know your thoughts on this by commenting below or emailing me at kevin@thenewwarehouse.com.

Key Takeaways

• Lior and I previously spoke at MODEX in 2020 in-person which is hard to believe in our current virtual world. As a refresher inVia Robotics is a robot as a service-based business that provides AI-driven robots that help fulfillment centers become more efficient and help to meet their service level agreement without putting employees at risk of being overworked. Their solutions have come in as a huge help during the pandemic for their customers due to the ability of the robots to keep working when employees cannot. Lior explains how the robot combination with a put wall type of setup allows the robot to be able to pick the orders and fill the spaces within the put wall at times when employees are not there. This is a huge help to reduce downtime not only during the pandemic but also in other times when you may need to close down.
• Since the last time, we spoke COVID changed businesses dramatically so I asked Lior how inVia has done throughout the pandemic. He discusses how many companies have tried to find a way to survive but in doing so many have also been able to thrive. With businesses thriving, it has created higher demand on fulfillment workers which has created some difficulties for maintaining safety. Lior discusses how their first adaptation was to build into their technology a way to keep workers distanced from each other to avoid any germs being spread. Additionally, he gives a great story on how they implemented remote deployments for a customer in Japan.
• If you know anything about my background it has been focused on inventory control for the majority of my career so when our first conversation mentioned it I knew I wanted to explore it further at a later date. Our discussion around this is incredibly interesting because it highlights great aspects of the inVia solution that help to improve inventory accuracy but also robots in general. One interesting point that Lior makes is that the robot will never make a mistake, it works to a fault so if it goes to a location and the wrong tote is there it will tell you. In contrast, a human might not say anything or they may see the right product is in the location to the left of where they are supposed to pick from so they will take it from there and not say anything. The robot forces you to be accurate and also calls out your mistakes and due to it not being able to think to the left or right it will not try to solve the issue itself like a human. Lior also mentions some of the built-in features or the inVia solution like being able to check counts based on the weight and also the ability to have the totes taken to a certain place for a person to fix. Watch the video below for information on how to cycle counting with their solution works.

Listen to the episode below and let us know if you think robots could make a dramatic improvement to your inventory accuracy in the comments.