Modern Materials Handling published a system report on GEODIS’s 600,000-square-foot Plainfield, Indiana, operation, where pallet-jack AMRs replaced manual electric pallet-jack travel for case picking. About 75 percent of volume is case pick. After pandemic-driven volume spikes forced three-shift operation with nine EPJs per shift, the 3PL deployed robot-assisted picking.
Productivity rose about 85 percent on average and as much as 150 percent on peak days; overall case-pick throughput roughly doubled versus the prior manual EPJ baseline. New associates typically start at 200 percent of the old standard because training now begins with the robot interface rather than forklift driving, facility navigation, and WMS screens. The site was able to return to two shifts and reduce daily picker headcount while redeploying people elsewhere on the Indianapolis campus.
Safety improved as walking and manual pallet-jack travel declined. Early reporting challenges were later offset by operational dashboards. The case is presented as a typical 3PL pattern: keep existing racking and WMS, add AMR pallet jacks and orchestration software, and convert travel time into pick time without a multi-year fixed-automation rebuild.