To increase the number of robots in Japanese warehouses, Dexterity collaborated with Sumitomo, a global trading and business investment firm with headquarters in Japan. By 2026, the businesses hope to have 1,500 intelligent material handling robots operating in Japan.
By Q1 2023, the companies intend to implement Dexterity’s parcel singulation and induction solutions with their first Japanese client. Additionally, Sumitomo and Dexterity will collaborate to launch a demo facility in Japan in October 2022.
To promote the Robots as a Service (RaaS) business in Japanese warehouses, Sumitomo and Dexterity entered into a distributorship agreement in Japan. Through its corporate venture capital arm Presidio Ventures in the United States, the company contributed to the 2020 funding round for Dexterity.
The full-stack robotic platform from Dexterity can assist robotic industrial arms in automating the most difficult warehouse tasks. Robots can now build multi-SKU pallets on the fly, singulate and induct chaotic flows of packages and bags, and pick and pack easily damaged items like bread and cake using the Software as a Service (SaaS)-based platform.
According to Samir Menon, CEO of Dexterity, “the full task robots we have deployed have only increased demand for flexible automation that can operate in existing workflows and infrastructure.” “Partnering with Sumitomo will speed up Dexterity’s customers’ deployment of FTE robot systems in their facilities,” says the company.
Dexterity’s engineers developed, tested, and oversaw the installation of all of the company’s robots since its founding in 2017, resulting in the picking of more than 40 million items in warehouses across the United States. The partnership between Dexterity and Sumitomo will increase access to full-task robots throughout Japan and guarantee that Dexterity’s systems will work with the country’s current warehouse workflows.
Dexterity has other international markets it intends to explore besides Japan. Dexterity announced in August 2022 that it would collaborate strategically with Dematic, a provider of intelligent automation solutions. Through the collaboration, Dematic will make full-task robots from Dexterity available as a component of its intelligent automation solutions. Dematic will help Dexterity enter the European market and will sell and deploy its robots there.
Ed Mullen, formerly the senior director of partnerships at Mobile Industrial Robots (MiR), joined the Dexterity team earlier this year after serving as the company’s vice president of sales for the Americas. In 2020, the business finally came out of stealth mode after raising $140 million in Series B funding.
