Kenco’s Robot Lab Reveals the Future of Warehouse Automation

30 Warehouse Robots in One Lab? Kenco Tests the Future

Kenco is expanding its warehouse automation testing facility in Chattanooga, Tennessee, from 10,000 square feet to 30,000 square feet. The third-party logistics provider says the larger Innovation Lab will allow it to evaluate roughly 30 types of robots and more than a dozen technologies in connected warehouse workflows.

A ribbon-cutting ceremony for the expanded facility is scheduled for Sept. 10 at Kenco’s Chattanooga headquarters. The lab will replace and build on the company’s original facility, which opened in 2015.

The expansion reflects a change in how Kenco wants to evaluate automation. Instead of testing individual machines as isolated point solutions, the company plans to study how multiple systems operate together across a warehouse process.

That approach is especially relevant to trucking because the first major demonstration will begin at the loading dock. Kenco plans to test an end-to-end workflow that starts with unloading pallets from a tractor-trailer and continues through internal transportation and depalletizing.

In the planned process, one robot will unload pallets from a trailer, another will move them farther into the facility, and a third will depalletize the cases. Gray Matter software will orchestrate the systems. The test environment will also include AutoStore and GrayOrange’s HiCLiME platform.

The objective is to observe how the equipment and software perform as a connected system, rather than judging each technology only on its own. For drivers, that means the testing will include the part of the warehouse process where freight first moves from a trailer into the facility.

Ainsley Williams, Kenco’s vice president of Automation and Innovation, said the original lab quickly filled with individual technologies. A larger footprint, she said, makes it possible to test more equipment working together in a realistic warehouse setting.

“In a 10,000-square-foot space, you can really gobble it up really quickly with point solutions and technologies,” Williams said. “We realized that if we had a bigger footprint, we could test more technologies as they work together in a system.”

Kenco says the expanded lab is designed to resemble real operating conditions. It will remain vendor-neutral, giving the company a setting to compare systems using operational data rather than relying only on demonstrations from individual equipment manufacturers.

That distinction matters for a 3PL, which may need to apply automation across facilities with different layouts, freight profiles and operating requirements. Kenco operates about 140 distribution centers and also manages material-handling equipment, including leased forklifts and maintenance services. The company says that combination gives it a direct role in both selecting and operating the technologies it recommends.

The expanded space will also support larger and taller equipment. Kenco plans to test cycle-counting towers that move vertically through warehouse aisles, along with other high-bay systems. Williams said a single palletizing or depalletizing robot could have occupied most of the previous facility.

Another project under consideration is robotic construction of random mixed-SKU pallets. Many current palletizing systems depend on cases arriving in a specific sequence. That requirement can work with automated storage and retrieval systems, but it is more difficult to accommodate in many 3PL operations, where freight may arrive in less predictable combinations.

Testing whether robots can build mixed-SKU pallets without strict sequencing could affect how cases are handled after they are unloaded from trailers. Kenco views the capability as a potential way to expand robotic pallet-building applications in large warehouses.

The lab is intended to identify those limitations before equipment is placed into a customer’s live operation. Williams emphasized that failure during testing is part of the process. A system that breaks down in a controlled lab can reveal problems that would be more disruptive in a production warehouse.

“A failed test in a lab is still a successful test in a lab because you wanted to watch it fail,” Williams said. “That’s kind of the purpose of a lab — to push it to failure. That’s not the purpose of production.”

For trucking operations, the significance is less about a single robot and more about how dock, warehouse and inventory systems are connected. Trailer unloading, pallet movement and case handling are separate steps today, but Kenco’s testing model is designed to evaluate them as one workflow.

The company says the expanded Innovation Lab will give equipment manufacturers a place to test products in a working-style environment and allow customers to examine potential systems before making a production investment. It will also provide additional space for collaboration with Chattanooga’s technology community.

Kenco’s approach places the emphasis on integration and deployment risk. The company is not presenting the lab as proof that every warehouse task can be automated. Instead, it is using the facility to determine which combinations of robotics, software and material-handling equipment can operate reliably under conditions that more closely reflect actual supply chain work.