At an e-commerce warehouse in Poland last week, Will O’Donnell looked on as a fleet of American-designed robots moved through the building, communicated with workers in Polish and assembled orders for shipment.
For O’Donnell, Managing Partner of Prologis Ventures, it was one example of how Prologis is combining its knowledge of a broad spectrum of tenants with its efforts to advance technology in order to help small and mid-sized companies benefit from automation.
Created in 2016, Prologis Ventures invests in Series A through Growth Stage companies that are developing new technologies and enterprise solutions for the logistics sector. Those innovations can focus on supply chain management, transportation, digital buildings, construction and other pain points for logistics companies.
The Polish robot fleet was designed by Locus – a U.S. technology company that is part of Prologic Ventures’ portfolio.
“Locus is a good entry point for small to medium businesses to put automation into their e-commerce warehouses,” O’Donnell said.
The system addresses a key pain point for logistics workers who spend each shift assembling orders of often disparate and distant items.
“Workers may walk nine to 11 miles a day just picking items off shelves,” O’Donnell said.
The Locus robots, however, assemble e-commerce orders by traveling to workers at set points around a warehouse. At each stop, the robot informs the worker of the nearby items that need to be placed into the robot’s bin.
“The robot is equipped to operate in 30-some different languages…and the robot will switch languages based on the identifying badge each worker is wearing,” O’Donnell said.
Companies that adopt Locus robot systems pay a monthly service fee, rather than a large upfront capital cost, making the technology more affordable to small and mid-sized companies, he added.
Prologis has mounted several initiatives to boost its ability to identify its tenants’ pain points, advance the most beneficial technologies and help tenants connect with appropriate business solutions, he said.
The company has focused on ways to leverage data in a two-part effort. The first part focused on a comprehensive data-management system for internal purposes aimed at optimizing operations and improving decision-making.
“In parallel, we continue to engage directly with our customers to better understand their pain points,” O’Donnell said. “Our customers will increasingly leverage AI to identify and resolve supply chain challenges, enhancing their ability to adapt to disruptions and boost productivity.”
Improved data systems also help push out relevant information to Prologis staff in all markets, such as research papers or field reports about technologies or business systems that might be helpful to their clients.
“We are in a unique position because we are leveraging knowledge across different customer bases,” O’Donnell said.
Prologis staff interact with industry leaders – such as Amazon, Walmart and DHL – and see how they are implementing new technologies.
“Obviously, we are not sharing trade secrets of Amazon, but we can see automation best practices and use that knowledge to accelerate our customers’ plans,” he said. “We are able to sit with a bunch of small customers, understand the areas that they are struggling with and understand how, as a partner, we can help them find a solution and accelerate their ability to adapt to change.”