Statista reported more than a 20 percent rise of the average online spending in the Asia Pacific from 2019 to 2020. The rise in multiple marketplaces in Asia Pacific such as JD, Taobao, Lazada, Tokopedia and Shopee are testimony to this flourishing trend in retail and e-commerce.

With the evolution of retail emerged new opportunities in related industries, such as a growing pie of warehouses, distribution centers (DCs), and fulfilment centers (FCs), and in turn, these industries seeking productivity and automation capabilities.

For years, DCs and FCs were resistant to adopting robots in warehousing despite embracing many other technologies. Some of these companies were concerned about the perceived inflexibility, safety, investment burdens of adopting industrial robots into their workflow.

However, the coming of age of collaborative robotics alleviated the shortcomings of traditional industrial robots. Now, collaborative robots (cobots) are ideal for repetitive tasks in DCs and FCs that require high accuracy to reduce costly errors or returns, while freeing human workers to take care of other upstream and downstream processes.

When dealing with dull and repetitive tasks, human workers can become fatigued and lose their concentration. Unlike human workers, cobots are capable of automating operations around the clock and significantly reduce human errors. As such, cobots are best suited for many supply chain environments, such as "pick and place" processes, relieving the burden on the human workforce.

Unlike traditional industrial robots that required safety fencing and operating footprint, cobots can easily work alongside human workers with no safety fencing required (upon risk assessment). Cobots can also be easily deployed, programmed, and guided, to adapt to many repetitive tasks in the supply chain environment.

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