IFOY Audit
Finalists undergo the three-stage IFOY Audit as part of the IFOY Audit, which takes place during the TEST CAMP INTRALOGISTICS. This consists of the scientific IFOY Innovation Check, the IFOY Test and the jury test.
SkyCube
Geekplus Europe
Geek+ SkyCube is an innovative high-density storage and retrieval solution that maximizes vertical space and enhances warehouse throughput. Its flexible design increases storage capacity, boosts picking speed, and integrates seamlessly with Geek+ Picking Robots, enabling a smart, unmanned warehouse for improved efficiency and scalability.
Product name and company
SkyCube – Geekplus Europe
Category
Stationary Robot / Robot Warehouse System
Description
Geek+ SkyCube is an advanced Pallet-to-Person solution designed to optimize warehouse operations by automating the retrieval, storage, and picking of pallets. This system provides high-density storage and high throughput capabilities, eliminating the need for decanting, which streamlines processes and enhances efficiency. With SkyCube, businesses can pick entire cases or individual items directly from pallets, reducing labor costs and order fulfillment times, while increasing accuracy and customer satisfaction.
By improving space utilization and offering decant-free, direct pallet picking, SkyCube helps businesses achieve faster and more accurate order fulfillment. The solution integrates seamlessly with existing warehouse systems, ensuring a smooth transition. It is ideal for B2B and B2C environments that require efficient handling of small, medium, and large items, particularly in industries such as 3PL, retail, apparel, manufacturing, FMCG, pharmaceuticals, and cold chain. SkyCube offers a competitive edge in today’s fast-paced market by transforming warehousing operations, reducing costs, and enhancing customer service.
Innovations
Decant-free operation: Unlike many traditional systems that require decanting, where items are transferred from bulk storage to individual bins, SkyCube eliminates this time-consuming and error-prone process. This enhances operational efficiency and reduces the likelihood of mistakes during order fulfillment.
Direct Pallet-to-Person picking: SkyCube allows for whole case and individual item picking directly from pallets, streamlining the workflow. This eliminates the need for extra handling or manual intervention, leading to faster order fulfillment and reduced labor costs.
High-density storage: SkyCube features advanced robotic systems that maximize vertical space utilization, enabling higher storage density than many comparable systems. This ensures more goods can be stored in less space, improving overall warehouse capacity and reducing real estate costs.
Seamless integration: SkyCube is designed to integrate effortlessly with existing warehouse systems, ensuring smooth scalability and easy adaptation to current workflows, without the need for major infrastructure changes.
Industry-specific adaptation: It is tailored for industries like 3PL, retail, apparel, FMCG, and pharmaceuticals, offering a versatile solution for handling a wide range of item sizes, from small to large, in B2B and B2C environments.
Market relevance
Third-party logistics (3PL): As e-commerce and supply chain operations continue to grow, 3PL providers need highly efficient and scalable solutions to manage vast amounts of inventory. SkyCube’s high-density storage and direct pallet-to-person picking make it ideal for reducing costs and improving throughput in 3PL warehouses.
Retail: Retailers, both in B2B and B2C, benefit from SkyCube’s ability to handle a wide variety of item sizes and manage large volumes of stock. The system’s efficiency in picking small, medium, and large items directly from pallets helps streamline order fulfillment and reduce lead times, critical in fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) environments.
Apparel and fashion: The fashion industry requires flexibility to handle a mix of small items and large stock. SkyCube’s versatile system caters to the demand for quick, accurate picking, improving turnaround times for fast fashion retailers and suppliers.
Manufacturing: Manufacturers benefit from SkyCube’s ability to improve inventory accuracy and speed in retrieving raw materials or components. The system’s integration with existing warehouse operations is especially valuable for improving production timelines.
Pharmaceuticals and cold chain: Handling sensitive goods like pharmaceuticals and perishable items in cold chain logistics demands high precision, efficiency, and compliance. SkyCube’s direct picking from pallets and high storage density make it a perfect fit for these industries.
Customer benefits
Operational Flexibility: SkyCube supports both B2B and B2C operations within the same solution, making it versatile for businesses with diverse fulfillment needs. It also accommodates bulk reserve storage on pallets and efficient order picking for individual pieces or cases, ensuring a streamlined process for various types of inventory management.
High-Density Storage: SkyCube delivers over 35 % more storage density compared to traditional AS/RS systems, offering 5 to 8 times the storage capacity of conventional picking solutions. This enables businesses to maximize available space, improve storage efficiency, and reduce warehouse footprint.
One-Stop Integrated Solution: SkyCube’s Integrated Robot Management System coordinates the dispatch of multiple robots, ensuring smooth and efficient operations. The system is highly scalable, allowing businesses to add robots as needed and supporting up to thousands of robots working concurrently, making it an ideal solution for growing enterprises seeking flexibility and automation in their logistics operations.
IFOY Innovation Check
Functionality / Type of implementation
The SkyCube system is a systematic combination of a classic Mobile Robotic Fulfillment System (MRFS, known since KIVA Systems, now Amazon Robotics) and a pallet warehouse with 3D shuttles. This creates an exciting and highly efficient automated storage solution, based on multiple well-established system components from Geekplus. The presented animation impressively illustrated the solution principle and successfully demonstrated the system´s advantages. A live demonstration of the complex solution was not possible during the IFOY TEST DAYS. Nevertheless, the SkyCube system is a well-thought-out and systematically implemented integration of both areas. The resulting space utilization within an existing warehouse infrastructure is remarkable.
Novelty / Innovation
The key innovation lies in the systemic, direct, and process-driven integration of pallet-based storage using a 3D shuttle system with an MRFS-based picking system. This ensures that stored palletized items are immediately available for picking. The typically required repacking of goods from pallets into bins becomes unnecessary, as pallet storage is an integral part of the system. This dual approach significantly reduces the overall workload for both operators and the system itself while increasing efficiency and performance. The use of standardized robots for transporting both picking shelves and pallets to operators enhances the operational flexibility of the solution, making it suitable even for volatile industries. The system´s high adaptability and flexibility are also noteworthy.
Customer benefit
The system’s key innovations also represent its primary customer benefits: The high storage density, elimination of repacking from pallets into bins, and the logical and physical integration of pallet-based storage with a bin-based picking system enable a highly efficient, high-performance process. All system components come from a single provider, forming a cohesive system while maintaining a high degree of flexibility. As a result, the system´s overall performance can be easily scaled, and the interface to manual operators in the picking area can be seamlessly expanded.
Market relevance
Mobile Robotic Fulfillment Systems have evolved from their roots in e-commerce into a wide range of distribution applications involving high SKU variability. Various industries now rely on such systems. By incorporating pallet-based storage, the range of potential applications expands even further. The system is suitable wherever goods need to be handled, stored, and picked. Both storage capacity and system performance are independently scalable, significantly reducing investment risk while enhancing adaptability. This makes the system viable for both small and large-scale operations. The modular design also allows for partial implementations at the start, without limiting future expansion options.
IFOY verdict
The integration of storage and picking enables a highly efficient and extremely dense unit, maximizing the use of available warehouse space. The implementation with proven components from the Geekplus ecosystem ensures a high level of expertise and established technology. The individual subsystems and components are part of the existing Geekplus portfolio, making them well-tested. The combination of these elements creates a robust system solution
| Functionality / type of implementation | + |
| Novelty / Innovation | Ø |
| Customer benefits | + |
| Market relevance | + |
| ++ very good / + good / Ø balanced / – less / — not available | |
Videos
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Image/video credits: Geekplus
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Statutes
In den Statuten sind die Grundwerte und die Standards des IFOY AWARD festgelegt, nach denen die Organisation handelt. Dazu gehören unter anderem Gremien, Wahlomodus, Bewertungskriterien sowie der Code of Conduct.
Committees
The International Intralogistics and Forklift Truck of the Year has three bodies: Jury, sponsors, and advisory board.