Locus says 90% labor cut in a warehouse

Locus Robotics says its new Array warehouse system can cut manual labor by 90% in order fulfillment, a sharper claim than the company has made for its earlier robot fleets. (mmh.com) The 90% figure came with Array’s debut at ProMat 2025 in Chicago, which ran March 17-20, 2025. Locus said the system is designed for “zero-touch” fulfillment, with robotic picking arms and tote handling replacing much of the human work in picking. (mmh.com) (promatshow.com) That is different from Locus’s better-known assisted-picking model, where autonomous mobile robots guide human workers through picks and mainly cut walking time. DHL, a Locus customer since 2017, said those robots can raise items picked per hour by up to 180%, not eliminate most labor outright. (dhl.com) Locus’s own case studies show the same split between augmentation and replacement. On its case-study page, the company highlights results such as doubling productivity at Staples Canada, a 61% productivity gain with a 20% labor reduction at Motivational Fulfillment, and a 300% picking-productivity increase at Dental City. (locusrobotics.com) The warehouse job at issue is picking: workers move through aisles, pull ordered items from shelves, and send them to packing. Locus built its first business around robots that travel the warehouse floor beside people; Array moves further toward a “robot-to-goods” setup in which the machine does the retrieval and pick. (dhl.com) (mmh.com) That helps explain why social posts are contrasting Locus with Kawasaki deployments in factories. Kawasaki’s published case studies mostly describe narrower cells for one assembly, welding, palletizing, or machine-tending task, rather than a full warehouse workflow. (kawasakirobotics.com) One Kawasaki example from 2019 involved an aerospace supplier automating nutplate installation, a repetitive fastening job with more than 200 part variations. The system still began with a human operator loading a cart and entering the part number before three Kawasaki robots and a vision system handled the 39-second installation process. (automate.org) Locus is also talking at a different scale than many factory robot case studies. The company says its automation now supports more than 150 brands across 350-plus sites worldwide, and its installed base was built first on collaborative mobile robots before the fully robotic Array launch. (mmh.com) (locusrobotics.com) The key distinction is not “robots” versus “no robots,” but how much of a workflow gets automated. In Locus’s older deployments, people still do the pick; in Array, Locus says the system is built to do the pick itself, which is why the labor-reduction claim is so much larger. (dhl.com) (mmh.com) For warehouse operators weighing automation, the comparison is less about one robot beating another than about scope. A robot that trims walking time, a robot cell that handles one assembly step, and a system pitched to remove 90% of manual fulfillment labor are solving three different jobs. (locusrobotics.com) (kawasakirobotics.com)