Robots helping fulfillment centers get you your holiday purchases

Online shoppers spent a record $9.4 billion on Cyber Monday, a 20% increase over last year’s sales - and that was just to kick off the holiday shopping season.

The challenge is to get all those presents to the right homes quickly. To make that happen, fulfillment centers are buzzing with activity generated by robots that are filling those orders.

“We are going to ship two times more units than we did last year,” said Brian Lemerise, President and COO of Quiet Logistics in Devens. The company fills and ships orders for a number of big national retailers.

Lemerise said they’ve already hired 700 additional workers this year, even busing some folks in from Brockton to fill all their vacancies.

“Robotics is an important element in our strategy to ship orders fast and accurately to the customer,” said Lemerise.

The bots used at Quiet Logistics come from Locus Robotics in Wilmington, a company that is riding this wave of automation.

“Our robots, as recently as three years ago, people said ‘Oh, that’s kind of a novelty’,” said Karen Leavitt, the Chief Marketing Officer for Locus Robotics. “A year ago, they said, ‘Wow, I really need to start adopting robots in order to improve the efficiency and productivity of my own operation’.”

Locus Robotics has already had to move to a larger space three times since 2016. They’re adding staff every week.

Leavitt says Massachusetts is a leader in robotics innovation. “The Boston area is really ground zero for robotics technology and talent, and that goes back decades. Boston is really key not just to the robotics industry in the U.S, but really worldwide.”

Robots can send shivers down many workers’ backs as they fear they could be replaced by a machine.

Leavitt believes that’s less of a concern in Massachusetts, because of the area’s low unemployment rate and the region’s focus on innovation and technology. “We’ve created a lot of really well-paying jobs here in Massachusetts that require tremendous creativity and scientific approaches to build this technology that’s really changing the world.”

It’s estimated the use of robots in the American workplace has doubled over the past 10 years. In the future, Leavitt expects to see even more automation in the hospitality industry, in health care, and in retailing.

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