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AutoStore launched Pio, its modular storage and retrieval system geared toward small to medium-sized companies. | Supply: AutoStore

AutoStore has launched Pio, its Product In/Out warehouse automation system, in North America for the primary time. The plug-and-play model of AutoStore’s automated storage and retrieval system (ASRS) it tailor-made for small and medium-sized companies. 

Pio is a modular and scalable ASRS product that runs on commonplace plug-and-play software program that may hook up with the most typical on-line retail and transport platforms. The system relies on a pay-per-pick mannequin. Much like a robotics-as-a-service mannequin, customers will solely buy product bins and the frames that robots run on, whereas AutoStore owns and manages the robots, ports and software program. 

Customers pay a payment for every merchandise picked, which might decrease the preliminary funding for deployment, permitting retailers with smaller margins to entry the system. 

“We established Pio to make our know-how accessible to smaller companies,” Mats Hovland Vikse, CEO of AutoStore, stated in a launch. “Solely 15% of the world’s warehouses are automated, and success operations at smaller retailers are nonetheless largely handbook. Pio ranges the taking part in area in order that enterprises of all sizes can benefit from the house and value efficiencies of automated storage and distribution programs.”

Pio is geared toward small to medium-sized retailers that promote something from attire, to sporting items, crafts and cosmetics. It doesn’t require any added labor or extra ground house to be applied. 

“With Pio, you possibly can develop with out having to maneuver, enabling customers to run their companies nearer to prospects. We’re already seeing success with Pio programs working at a number of high-profile retailers in Europe. Now that the system is out there in North America, we’re able to assist fast-growing impartial retailers right here as effectively,” Magne Hatteland, VP and Head of Pio, stated in a launch. 

AutoStore was based in 1996 and is headquartered in Nedre Vats, Norway. It presently operates over 1,000 programs in over 45 nations. The corporate went public on Euronext’s Oslo Inventory Alternate in October 2021. On the time, it was valued at $12.4 billion.