Enhancing productivity and security with computer vision

The context

Every day, a leading Belgian food retailer prepare shipments for the stores in its warehouses. The process involves two critical roles: order pickers, who collect goods based on store “shopping lists,” and forklift drivers, who retrieve pallets from high racks. With 60–80 pickers performing around 1,000 picks per day—one every 26 seconds—any interference between these roles slows operations and increases safety risks.

The logic

Traditional workflows create congestion: order pickers cannot access pallets directly and depend on forklift drivers to bring goods down. This interaction often leads to delays and inefficiencies. The retailer aimed to reduce these bottlenecks and improve both productivity and safety by leveraging its existing computer vision system.

The solution

Euranova partnered with the retailer to transform this vision into action. Using object detection, the system tracks real-time locations of order pickers and pallets. We developed an algorithm that analyzes this data and dynamically directs forklift drivers to less congested aisles, minimizing disruptions. To ensure adoption, we designed a user-friendly interface that provides clear, actionable guidance to drivers. On the engineering side, we focused on deploying the application securely and efficiently on Microsoft Azure, ensuring scalability and reliability.