Shipping and mailing service provider Pitney Bowes says it will automate middle-mile sorting tasks with technology from Berkeley, California-based Ambi Robotics.
Stamford, Connecticut-based Pitney Bowes says it has deployed the firm’s AmbiSort B-Series solution at U.S. coastal e-commerce hubs ahead of the 2023 peak holiday season. The product is intended to speed parcel sortation to middle-mile delivery providers, while improving productivity, accuracy, and worker safety.
The rollout expands a relationship between the two companies, after Pitney Bowes had previously adopted the AmbiSort A-Series small parcel sortation systems for last-mile operations. Pitney Bowes is also an investor in the company, having participated in a $32 million venture capital round raised by Ambi in 2022.
“Today’s e-commerce demands must be met with speed, and as such, technological solutions must be scaled quickly. At Pitney Bowes, we are partnering with some of the most innovative companies in the industry to make B2C ecommerce logistics easier for our clients,” Stephanie Cannon, SVP of Operations Excellence and Collaborative Innovation at Pitney Bowes, said in a release. “With Ambi Robotics, we were able to develop a sortation system that solved a particular need and scaled it quickly across our ecommerce hubs, adding capacity for our clients ahead of peak season.”
Specifically, the AmbiSort B-Series improves sorting operations while reducing operating costs by inducting and sorting parcels into gaylord destinations and addressing the challenges of labor-intensive manual sorting throughout high-speed supply chain operations. It adapts to various use cases, such as reverse logistics, interfacility sortation, sort-to-carrier, zone-skipping, and automated parcel induction.
"We view automation as the execution of the undesirable tasks that humans don’t want to do so that employees can build a sustainable career. We achieve this by elevating the working conditions, setting the new standard of human work, and creating new desirable roles like robot operator and super robot operator," Ryan Hannon, VP of Industrial Engineering and Collaborative Innovation at Pitney Bowes, said in a release.
