Manual sortation and fulfillment of orders often relies on putwalls and other techniques for short-term storage and conveyance. Mushiny Co. said its Intelligent 3D Sorter automates the picking process and enables warehouse operations to “dramatically” grow their batch or wave sizes.

Spikes in e-commerce demand, sorting of soft bagged goods or fragile items, and the need to trace foods or pharmaceuticals throughout production and logistics all pose challenges to supply chains.

By combining an automated carousel with mobile racks of totes and human picking, Mushiny said its system increases the amount of order lines picked per POD or tote presentation. Adding one to four infeed lines to the 3D Sorter allows it to handle a wide range of items and reduces the number of robots required, it added.

Released in November, the Intelligent 3D Sorter includes three innovations: an elevated sorting efficiency, a high degree of flexibility, and an optimized return on investment (ROI), said the Suzhou, China-based company. It said its peak efficiency is more than 10,000 picks per hour.

The system can do both horizontal and vertical sorting increase put-order efficiency by over 200%, and improve pick order efficiency by more than 300%, said Mushiny. It can be easily integrated with warehouse management systems and other production software, and it features a compact and modular design for ease of deployment and maintenance.

Mushiny cited a fashion company with a wide product range or SKU count as a typical customer. The Intelligent 3D Sorter could fulfill many orders concurrently, as robots continuously transfer completed orders and buffer them as needed before dispatching. Mushiny said the combination of robots and human pickers could increase retail and e-commerce productivity, as well as efficiently process returns.

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