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Comment by karambahh | Hacker News Reader

The only downside I see with Autstore is building maintenance.

What about maintenance on a column? You have to stop the whole system, unload & disassemble part of the grid just to run a new cable or check for humidity or whatever on your structural columns.

That's the only downside I see. It's a very simple concept solving a very real issue and their motto "stop airhousing start warehousing" real hits home!

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From what it looks like it may not be so bad. Since the system appears to be dynamically scalable you can most likely move all items out of a section and make it off limits. Then do maintenance etc on that section.

looking at autostore I was curious how many skus can be done efficiently and how deep you can go relative to the number of fast moving lines? With a million SKUs it might be fun to see what initial mapping can be done. Also, how can hazardous stacks be integrated to they can deliver to the same work station as regular items?

as for maintenance I would think a few strategic extra rows could serve that purpose without losing too much efficiency.

most the picking I am used to has both voice and light based picking with high velocity parts duplicated to the front.

It will depend on the size of the grid, number of positions on one level and number of robots. For fast movers, autostore can prepare those products and bring them to a few of the top levels when users are not actively picking or doing putaway. When the picking starts, those robots can get accessed to fast movers more quickly.

For maintenance, there is an extra area outside the grid where you can move the robot out of the grid to do some maintenance work on it without affecting the rest of the system.

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