Rohlik.cz Prague Fulfillment Center

Project Overview

Rohlik.cz, part of the Rohlik Group and one of Europe's largest online grocery retailers, sought to enhance automation within its fulfillment center in Prague. E-grocery operations present a unique logistical challenge due to the need to handle products stored in different environmental zones: ambient, fresh produce, chilled, and frozen. Traditionally, items from these separate zones are picked independently and sent via conveyor to a central manual consolidation area, which can become a bottleneck.

The goal for Rohlik was to automate this critical consolidation and dispatch process to improve speed, accuracy, and overall throughput. The company selected Brightpick to implement a robotic solution that could intelligently manage the flow of items from multiple picking zones, assemble complete customer orders, and prepare them for various fulfillment methods including home delivery, curbside pickup, and in-store pickup.

Technical Solution

Brightpick Dispatcher Autonomous Mobile Robots (AMRs)

The core of the automation is a fleet of Brightpick Dispatcher autonomous mobile robots. These robots are responsible for the final assembly and transport of customer orders. They navigate the fulfillment floor to meet incoming totes from the different picking zones.

Key Features

The system specializes in solving the core e-grocery challenge: seamlessly merging items from disparate temperature zones into a single, complete order using autonomous mobile robots. This replaces a typically manual and error-prone consolidation step.

A significant operational feature is the ability to pre-pick and stage orders. This decouples the picking process from the strict dispatch schedule, allowing the warehouse to level out labor and resource usage throughout the day, which directly increases total possible daily throughput. The robots provide flexible last-meter transportation to multiple types of outbound points (delivery, curbside, in-store).

Results & Benefits

The automation successfully increased the fulfillment center's total daily throughput by enabling a smoother, more balanced workflow throughout the operating day, eliminating peaks and troughs associated with rigid dispatch schedules.

The complex and critical task of order consolidation was fully automated, reducing manual labor, potential errors, and accelerating the time from last item pick to order dispatch. The system supports Rohlik's omnichannel strategy by efficiently feeding orders to the correct channel—home delivery, curbside, or in-store pickup—from a single automated process.

Challenges & Solutions

The primary operational challenge was the inefficient manual consolidation of items arriving on separate conveyors from different temperature zones, which slowed down order completion. Brightpick's solution was to deploy Dispatcher AMRs that act as intelligent, mobile consolidation points, automatically gathering all components of an order and delivering it as a single unit.

A broader planning challenge was the volatility of order volume, leading to inefficient resource use. The Brightpick system addressed this by introducing a buffering capability. Orders can be pre-assembled and held in the robotic staging area, allowing work to be distributed evenly across shifts and maximizing the utilization of both picking staff and the automated dispatch system.

System Integrator

Brightpick acted as the system integrator and technology provider for this project. They supplied the Brightpick Dispatcher autonomous mobile robots, the AI-driven software platform for robot orchestration and order management, and integrated this system into Rohlik's existing multi-zone picking and conveyor infrastructure in the Prague fulfillment center.