Softeon Expands Software

Softeon has expanded its software support for materials handling systems, especially for mobile robots and put walls.

While Softeon easily integrates with and optimizes virtually all types of materials handling systems in the distribution center, it is seeing special interest by companies in mobile robots and put walls – technologies for which it provides comprehensive software support.

While very different from each other, both mobile robots and put walls share some common attributes. For example, both can be deployed at a lower scale and price point, and expand flexibly over time. Both mobile robots and put walls also offer the opportunity to drive improved productivity and reduce the need for adding workers in what continues to be a very challenging labor environment. Both do so with a lot less heavy footprint (and cost) than full-blown goods-to-person or other major automation systems.

Softeon can integrate with robotic systems in different ways. If a customer chooses to use the robot’s application software to manage picking, Softeon can easily integrate its WMW/WES in that way, often still managing location and inventory information and sending needed picks and locations to the AMR software.

But Softeon also uniquely offers a mobile robot platform that can integrate with machines of different types and from different vendors. This provides seamless integration, for example, as inventory is passed from one type of robot to another. More importantly, companies can flexibly add robots from new providers with new and varying capabilities, capacities, and configurations.

This “future proofs” a company’s investment in robots today, with maximum flexibility to add different types of robots over time.

Softeon’s put wall integration starts with algorithms to determine which orders in the pool are best suited to go through the wall(s). This is especially important as companies can start small, with limited put wall capacity.

Softeon also provides end-to-end integration and support. No third-party put wall software is required. Softeon simultaneously optimizes both picking and “putting” to the wall to achieve the lowest cost and greatest throughput. It allows multiple waves to be processed on a given wall module concurrently, and multiple associates to work on the same wall at once.

Softeon’s broad and deep supply chain execution portfolio of solutions was built from the ground-up with support for the unique needs of 3PLs in mind.

Among a number of put wall deployments, one Softeon omnichannel retail customer shows the true scalability of put wall technology. It started with one wall module as a pilot, then added 9 more walls based on the initial success, then later almost 20 more, along with a new mechanized pick module to feed put wall operations.

“Softeon provides innovative and differentiated support for materials handling systems with very unique support, especially for the increasingly popular mobile robots and put wall systems,” said Dan Gilmore, chief marketing officer at Softeon.