PT Pos Indonesia – the state-owned company responsible for providing postal services throughout Indonesia – has introduced LiBiao Robotics’ autonomous mobile robot-based ‘t-Sort’ parcel sorting technology at its processing centre in Surabaya, a port city on the island of Java. 
The installation marks the start of what the company describes as ‘a period of irreversible transformation’ that will see manual processes replaced by automated systems throughout the business.
LiBiao’s ‘t-Sort’ system, along with RFID parcel scanning software, has been integrated with Pos Indonesia’s existing IT system to enable parcels or letters to be tracked from the moment that they leave the sender until their arrival at the delivery address.
“Everything is connected,” says Faisal Rohmat, a director of Pos Indonesia. “This means we will be able to ensure the fast and safe parcel and letter delivery that our customers expect.”
Prior to the installation of the ‘t-Sort’ system Pos Indonesia had relied on human resources to sort the parcels at the Surabaya processing facility. One of the immediate benefits that the switch to robot technology has brought is the fact that Pos Indonesia has been able to reassign some 80 per cent of the staff that were previously required to undertake sorting duties to other, more profitable tasks within the business.
Libiao Robotics’ ‘t-Sort system’ consists of sorting robots, an easy-to-assemble operating platform and control software. Its modular design means ‘t-Sort’ is quick and easy to relocate – so if, at some point in the future, Pos Indonesia wishes to reconfigure the sorting process they can do so with minimal disruption to the business. Furthermore, should the number of parcels that pass through the unit increase – or, for that matter, decrease – robots can simply be added or taken away to ensure that ‘t-sort’ delivers optimum throughput speeds and maximises energy efficiency.
Around the world, an estimated 30 billion parcels are processed using LiBiao’s autonomous mobile robots each year by companies as diverse as Walmart, Uniqlo and China Post. LiBiao Robotics’ European headquarters is based in Frankfurt, Germany.
