ASRS for Cold Storage Facilities

Manual cold storage warehouses rely on physical effort to pivot sizeable loads, often breaking the cold chain. Taking workers in and out of chilling conditions to pick and pack doesn’t make sense, particularly when mistakes from fatigue or cold can create out-of-spec raw materials and finished goods. In a manual sub-zero environment, even a quick break from picking can mean many minutes of reading packages to find the right product slot. ASRS eliminates this wasted time, taking care of all storage and retrieval beneath the roof where there’s no need to cool and light. This means the machines pay for themselves fast and deliver costs lower than that of conventional warehouse solutions.

ASRS for Cold Storage Facilities: Overcoming the Harsh Realities of Refrigerated Logistics

Cold chain logistics is more than the coolest-sounding part of the supply chain. It’s a sub-zero temperature-controlled, highly computerized, and automated environment where the cold chain industry relies on technology and management to keep perishables fresh.

Adams Nurseries & Chemists couldn’t afford product recalls , not to mention patient safety compromised. That’s why they installed an ASRS solution almost as soon as they opened the doors on their first climate-controlled, hazardous zone warehouse. We’ve worked with all sizes and types of pharmaceutical manufacturers and distributors over the past 30 years to turn ASRS for pharma into the least of your worries.

The Unique Sub-Zero Obstacles of Cold Chain Warehousing

The cozy thermostats of biotech, pharmaceutical, and healthcare warehouses, typically set to a balmy 20°C (68°F), couldn’t be more different from the icy realities some Canadian and Scandinavian ASRS must tolerate. The human body is roughly 60% water, and optimal storage of ASRS could include an equally high percentage. Coating robot belts, drives, and bearings with a sheen of moisture could prevent operation, yet it’s an ongoing struggle when barcode readers and robotic grippers constantly move in and out of the cold. These in-and-out cycles introduce condensation and freestanding water to the ASRS, which turns to ice when the wet robots return to the refrigerated or frozen warehouse. If operation is important, the ice must be controlled with fans and heat trace, or the systems simply grind to a halt.

Keep track of all the items crisscrossing this fast-paced warehouse requires exacting inventory management. Order accuracy is paramount, whether you’re restocking empty store shelves or assembling eaches for direct-to-consumer shipments. Wondering where to start with warehouse automation for FMCG? Armstrong’s ASRS experts design your system from the ground up to fit your warehouse footprint and handle your inventory rotation requirements.

Why ASRS is the Ultimate Solution for Cold and Frozen Storage

Energy. It’s the lifeblood of refrigerated warehouses and the biggest line item on any cold storage balance sheet. That’s because there’s so much of it. Refrigerated warehouses devour energy at a rate seven times higher than that of an average commercial building. approx 60% of cold storage operating costs are electricity bills. It’s easy to see how this can cripple a business. closer to refrigeration sources eliminates energy scarcity Waste. Protecting cold storage systems from waste sounds simple enough but with human-driven forklifts and conveyors loading and unloading goods mistakes happen. quite often Higher levels of inventory are needed to ensure product availability even though it doesn’t always sell. Time. Running out of space is a waste and when storage is compromised to avoid reaching capacity problems occur. AS/RS expands storage space leveraging vertical height and allowing warehouses to grow “up” rather than “out”. It’s also easier to find individual items and avoid moving cases around to get to what you need. Redistributions can be done automatically””Toyota. operations manager maintaining the ideal temperature for products and picking the right energy solutions are the biggest challenges. You can’t sell products that don’t arrive in pristine condition and “”””.Climate change isn’t going to put cold storage out of business but shifting weather patterns and increasing temperatures will make it more expensive for warehouses. not insurmountable with ASRSmodels have your back and protect your product from temperature fluctuations and cross-contamination suitable solution for any application.”””.Requests for products are sent directly to the automation system Items are fetched and sent to the retrieval opening while a sensor continually monitors the slot The automated hatches work on a FIFO principle transporting the panel to the hatches that are in the required storage zone are used to retrieve it from the door and fetch the panel from a slot in the storage zone As soon as the panel occupies the designated slot the automated forklift takes it to the retrieval opening”

Automotive parts storage has in fact been using ASRS for years to automatically retrieve and transport temperature-sensitive parts , such as batteries, electronics, and adhesives, reliably and traceably at the right temperature. These parts degrade alarmingly quickly in constantly rising temperatures, but freezing is not the solution. The problem is complicated in that deep-freezing warps the insulating plastics and elastomers in the ultra-low temperature cure process. Is there a fix to protect the integrity of such varied critical parts?

Best-in-Class ASRS Implementations for Cold Storage

Ecommerce warehouse storage ain’t what it used to be. It’s a thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle. A million dominoes wobbling. A spiderweb in a wind tunnel. How do you keep track of all those SKUs, crisscrossing in mid-air? Online grocery outfits pledge to get that pint of Ben & Jerry’s to the customer’s door within two hours of their mouse click. Two hours. That’s the level of service we’ve come to. Hey, but wait a minute. Where do you stow all the milk and Eggs Benedict at two degrees above freezing alongside the KitKats and Kraft Dinner? ASRS for ecommerce doesn’t even try. It only concerns itself with big warehouse problems. Like all those suntanning lotions and Diet Cokes that nobody’s buying in-season because it’s dumped with five feet of snow outside. No biggie. ASRS for ecommerce sends the robots out into the minus-anything tundra to fetch up all the suntan lotion and put it back on the shelves ready for Christmas. Then it sends the robots back out to get the Christmas tinsel, so the suntan lotion doesn’t get lonely. Simple, really. And the laughingstock of warehouse aisles everywhere are these seasonal Cyber Week shoppers. They wait eleven months to buy themselves a computer on Black Friday, and then expect you to warehouse it for them until next November. When do they think they are, Amazon? ASRS for ecommerce has the last laugh. Ha, we do stage (that’s the term) retail orders in sophisticated climate-controlled buffers for up to 20 minutes. But then the whole damn order is as good as a sunk cost if that customer changes their mind yet again or goes and gets itself a virus (the computer). Similarly, ArmstrongLtd’s ASRS for ecommerce is so right for the grocery warehouse stage business because we only heist tomato soup and T-bone steak out of that cold-storage buffer with them while they’re urgently waiting to be loaded onto the last-legs courier. Everything else, particularly that computer that’s months out of production by now, we will never even stick in the freezer. We’ll just give the leftovers to charity, write it off, and next time don’t tell the machine once it’s been ordered. Rest my case. ArmstrongLtd’s ASRS for ecommerce modular designs can puzzle-in cold or hot storage for warehouse downs taller than a Christmas tree or ship extra warehouse capacity at a moment’s Easter.

Another problem suffered by cold storage companies is the lack of staff. There aren’t many people willing to work under sub-zero conditions, thus, these companies have to face high turnover rates. Our ASRS makes it unnecessary for personnel to be in the freezing areas, allowing you to transfer employees to areas adding more value such as customer service or quality control. The operation of our solutions is user-friendly making the training process faster cutting it from weeks to days.

Safeguard Your Cold Chain with Automated Resilience

What will your automated storage and retrieval system include in five years? We don’t have a crystal ball, but redundancy will undoubtedly separate malfunctioning warehouses from delivery champions. Redundancy to the power grid, refrigeration system, even the storage and retrieval mechanism. Resilience isn’t just the competitive edge; it’s the cost of doing business in a 2026 market too hostile for gamble. The ASRS’s reliability and real-time remote monitoring will be the first reason managers say they chose it.