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Stories
Mobile robots revolutionize order fulfillment

The brainchild of Mick Mountz (MBA 1996), Kiva Systems, with its army of small, battery-powered, orange mobile robots, offers a game-changing approach to the way e-commerce retailers such as The Gap, Staples, Saks 5th Avenue, Crate and Barrel, Walgreens, and now Amazon, annually fulfill millions of orders.
Kiva’s distribution center automation technology simplifies operations and reduces costs while increasing flexibility. When orders are received, hundreds of autonomous mobile robots are directed by a complex software application to find and retrieve the desired items. The result is a distribution center that is quick and low-cost to set up, inexpensive to operate, and easy to change anywhere in the world.
An MIT-trained mechanical engineer, Mountz encountered inefficiencies in order fulfillment while working at an Internet-based grocery home-delivery service, which prompted him to launch Kiva Systems in 2003. “We decided products that could walk and talk on their own would be the best way to solve the problem,” says Mountz, who continues as CEO of the company he sold to Amazon.com in 2012.
(Published April 2014)
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