Fabric, Maersk Debuting AI-Driven Automated Fulfillment Center
Fabric and Danish shipping company A.P. Møller —Maersk are opening a 38,000-square-foot automated-fulfillment center in Dallas, powered by Fabric’s advanced robotic and software technology. The facility offers an AI-driven automated e-commerce fulfillment solution in an urban environment with the goal of maximizing warehouse productivity while minimizing real estate footprint requirements.
“The growth of e-commerce continues to reshape the retail landscape,” noted Erez Agmoni, global head of innovation — logistics and services at Maersk, whose U.S. office is in Florham Park, N.J. “As we look to help our customers streamline their supply chains end to end, we see Fabric’s automated fulfillment solution as one that is highly capable of meeting the demand for efficient warehousing and fulfillment where labor and real estate resources are scarce.”
[Read more: “Warehouses of the Future”]
According to Fabric, its high-density, high-throughput cube-based storage system can fully leverage warehouse ceiling heights to effectively maximize the potential of smaller facility footprints. Additionally, with the aid of advanced robots and software, the system is optimized to fulfill orders of single-picked items for same-day or next-day delivery. This design makes the technology well suited for distributed warehouse networks in urban areas, putting goods closer to population centers and thereby lowering shipping costs and expediting delivery times. The Dallas facility is optimized for high-volume, business-to-consumer e-commerce, capable of managing up to 25,000 SKUs.
“With our proven track record of operating our state-of-the-art facilities for the past five years, we have honed our capabilities to make each piece of the fulfillment process work together seamlessly to enable retailers to unlock the business value of fulfillment automation,” said Avi “Jack” Jacoby, CEO of Tel Aviv-based Fabric, which has a main office in New York. “Teaming up with Maersk allows each company to do what it does best, with the ultimate goal of offering retailers unprecedented value and service.”
Final facility preparations are underway, with the site expected to be fully operational this fall in support of an online B2C retailer that the companies have so far declined to name.
