Online Medical Retailer Supports Rapid Growth with Mobile Robots

NorthShore Care Supply partnered with advanced automation providers to transform its fulfillment operations, enabling faster, more efficient order processing to support rapid growth.

Because NorthShore Care Supply provides healthcare products, there is a natural sense of urgency to fulfill customer orders accurately and as quickly as possible. The company is a direct-to-consumer online retailer of adult incontinence products, providing customers with the confidence and ability to maintain their daily activities and a high quality of life.

In business for 25 years in the Chicago area, NorthShore has experienced strong growth driven by rising demand for its high quality products and consultative support services, including a recent 30% surge that prompted an expanded facility and the addition of autonomous mobile robot (AMR) automation.

Order fulfillment at NorthShore’s facility was a fully manual pick pack ship process that handled only half of today’s volume. Staff relied on heavy pushcarts, often weighing 250–300 lbs., and extensive walking as they navigated the warehouse. These physically demanding tasks are now handled by autonomous mobile robots (AMRs), allowing team members to focus on safer, higher value work. As demand grew, NorthShore moved into a new 180,000 sq. ft. facility in 2020 and conducted an engineering design study to identify the most effective automation solutions for optimizing order fulfillment within roughly 35,000 sq. ft. of the new distribution center.

NorthShore Care Distribution Center and Order Fulfillment — KUKA mobile robots reduce walking time by bringing inventory to warehouse associates.

NorthShore partnered with Numina Group, a warehouse automation integrator, to conduct a design study that defined process improvements and evaluated the technologies best suited to its order profile and growth goals. The study confirmed the need for a Warehouse Execution System (WES) to connect new automation with NorthShore’s in house ERP and WMS, leading to the selection of Numina’s Real time Distribution Software (RDS) for its advanced order orchestration and voice directed picking capabilities. The resulting system design combines voice-directed batch picking with AMRs that transport carts holding 20–25 orders, automatically connect and drop them at the pack-and-ship conveyor and parcel sorter, and integrate with conveyors and supporting equipment. This end to end solution automates the outbound operation and more than doubled NorthShore’s shipping capacity.

NorthShore upgraded its original fleet of six AMRs with five of KUKA’s latest-generation KMP 600P autonomous mobile robots. The new KUKA AMRs feature a lower profile with a height of just 11.5", allowing an additional shelf to be added to the existing carts. This additional shelf increased cart capacity by eight orders per trip, enabling up to 36 orders to be picked per AMR trip.

KMP 600P mobile robot in a warehouse — Smart robotics in action: KMP 600P AMRs deliver carts directly to picking zones for faster fulfillment.

Additionally, the KUKA AMRs deliver faster cart pick-up and drop-off cycle times, along with higher transport speeds across pick zones while moving carts with a 1,000 lb. load capacity, a 40% increase in payload. “The order picking boost achieved with KUKA’s AMRs, allowing more orders to be picked per hour using only five AMRs instead of the original six, was a key factor in our decision,” said Jeff Pfeiffer, Senior Director of Customer Delivery at Numina. “Faster operation and increased capacity enable the customer to keep pace with a 30% increase in order volume over the past 20 months.”

KMP 600P for warehouse automation — Scalable AMRs from KUKA help NorthShore meet growing demand with speed and accuracy.

Automation eases employee strain

The company’s warehouse currently employs fourteen people, with eight cross-trained flex workers performing picking, packing, and shipping tasks. The AMRs have achieved operational investment goals, including faster order picking, more orders picked per AMR trip, and improved cart shelf positioning ergonomics, allowing for a less strenuous picking operation on the employee.

Warehouse order picking using mobile robots — Autonomous robots navigate safely alongside workers to streamline pick-and-pack operations.

The KUKA AMRs achieved the customer’s objectives. Pickers do not follow the AMRs; instead, voice-directed picking using mobile wearable computers, headsets, and hands-free barcode scanners instructs and verifies operator movement and picking tasks. This approach uses voice commands in what the industry refers to as “Meet Me Mode” order picking. RDS BatchBot 2.0 determines the closest available pick operator and automatically directs that person to meet the AMR at its next pick location. This feature minimizes operator walk time, enables multiple operators across pick zones to perform cart picking tasks, and contributes to NorthShore’s 300+ units per hour pick rate.

At the completion of picking, the AMRs deliver pick carts, up to eleven operator pack stations, with six active during normal order volume, located alongside the pack and ship conveyor. Each station holds a queue of up to three carts for packing items and sample products, and for inducting full cases onto the conveyor line for transport to scan, weigh, dim, and sort systems before carton routing to UPS and FedEx parcel carrier trailer loading.

Once an AMR drops off a pick cart at packing, the KUKA Fleet Manager software assigns it to the next available RDS-WES pick mission, ensuring AMRs are continuously available to automatically pick up an empty cart and begin the next batch of order picking tasks. Adjacent to the packing area is the “AMR parking lot,” where idle AMRs wait for the command to start their next assignment.

Humans and mobile robots in a warehouse — KUKA AMRs transport multi-order carts seamlessly through NorthShore’s warehouse aisles.

AMR Traffic Management Software

Numina Group’s RDS BatchBot? 2.0 software dispatches AMR task assignments to the KUKA.AMR Fleet Manager software for cart pick-up and movement. At NorthShore, the KUKA AMR software integrates with RDS to improve end-to-end order flow across the fulfillment operation.

AMR locations and tasks are visible through KUKA’s AMR operator and management web interfaces, allowing the operations team to see which AMRs are active, executing picks, or completing a mission and heading to the pack and ship area.

“An excellent feature of RDS BatchBot 2.0, combined with KUKA AMR movement and voice-directed picking, is more efficient cart movement. This differs from other systems where the picker is tied to a specific cart or zone. Instead, our pickers are coordinated with AMR movement. When RDS sends instructions to both the AMR and the picker, they meet at the precise time and pick location. This keeps our order picking process flowing without requiring managers to continuously shift labor among different pick zones,” said Yutaka Takaki, Warehouse Manager at NorthShore.

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When an AMR picks up a cart, the software determines the most efficient group of orders for the cart’s travel route. The AMR’s top-mounted camera scans the cart ID barcode to validate the cart for the assigned pick mission. Once picks are completed, the robots head to packing, drop off their cart, and pick up an empty one.

“This was NorthShore’s first project with KUKA AMRs and our latest release of RDS BatchBot? 2.0, featuring improved Meet Me Mode voice-directed order fulfillment capabilities,” explained Dan Hanrahan, CEO and founder of Numina Group. “RDS dynamically generates and optimizes batch cart pick missions that require twenty-five or more pick location stops across multiple pick zones. Our latest generation AI-based machine learning software improves operator selection and assignment logic to further decrease walk time, allowing operators to spend more time picking.”

KMP 600P transporting product — Scalable robotics solution helps North Shore meet growing demand with speed and accuracy.

AMRs bring the latest technology

According to Takaki, the KUKA AMRs provide more advanced safety technology. “With the previous AMRs, which operated independently of each other, we experienced a few collisions,” he said. “When this happened, they often sustained damage. Operators, including myself, can walk in front of the KUKA AMRs, which travel at nearly twice the speed of the previous units, and we have yet to experience any mishaps or even come close. Thanks to KUKA AMR Fleet and the robots’ onboard AI, which recognizes people crossing their path, we are confident the AMRs will stop to prevent collisions.”

Another technical advantage of the KUKA AMRs, in addition to the lower profile, safer operation, and larger load capacity, is the integrated lift that enables the AMRs to lift and carry carts or pallets to pick-up, transport and drop off product in the operation. The previous robots used a cart tugger transport method that caused a lot of wear and tear on the cart’s caster wheels. Every three to four months, casters wore out and needed replacement or misalignment problems occurred during AMR cart transport operations.

KMP 600P AMR charging — AMR docks for charging, ensuring continuous uptime and uninterrupted warehouse operations.

Customer First Philosophy

NorthShore’s warehouse operates from 7:00 AM to 10:30 PM. As order volume grows, they are prepared for growth by adding more AMRs and carts to easily scale the automation for future same-day order volume growth. The DC ships six days per week, from Sunday through Friday, with Sundays and Mondays representing peak order volumes, now exceeding 2,500+ orders per shift. To support this demand, the KUKA AMR fleet provides the performance needed to handle peak days of up to 10,000 picks.

With flexible, and scalable automation in place, NorthShore is well positioned for continued growth while maintaining the high service standards its customers rely on.