Grab™ | ASKO Rogaland

Fleet of Grab's deployed in a semi automated warehouse

Published by Synnøve Kjerstadon 18.06.25

ASKO is Norway's largest grocery wholesaler and a part of NorgesGruppen ASA. With its 4000 employees and 13 regional warehouses, ASKO ensures effective distribution of products to the grocery, retail convenience and institutional catering sectors all around Norway.

ASKO Rogaland is a semi-automated regional warehouse delivering goods to 1260 stores in the Stavanger aera on the west coast of Norway.

Challenges

In recent years, ASKO Rogaland has seen a significant increase in the stocking and distribution of heavy brewery products, leading to a rise in strain injuries and sick leave among manual picking operators.

A project team was established to find solutions for healthier picking conditions, with the ambition of 30% reduction of weight picking per operator while maintaining long term profitability. The project initially focused on the manually picked heavy products (SKUs), and with the easy installation and capability up to 30 kgs in each pick, Grab was chosen.

Solution

Fleet of Grabs, with a versatile vacuum gripper and a mechanical bottle gripper, working in parallel
Full pallet picking, side by side with picking operators.
End to end automated process : Pallet pick-up from a pallet dispenser and offloading on conveyor, including ‘digital handshake’ between the different systems.

Benefits

After the first Grab was deployed, ASKO Rogaland immediately saw the reduction in weight picked per manual operator. With several Grab's and the bottle gripper now in operation as well, the number of heavy SKUs picked further increased and the impact is even better, putting them ahead of the game with sustainable picking conditions and long-term profitability.

There are lots of additional benefits of introducing scalable automation, learning curve for the organization has been tremendous, and especially the younger operators have found their job more interesting with automation management. ASKO also feels more prepared for future regulations of weight restriction for manual operators.

Key numbers per Grab

picked per month

> 40T

packs per shift

>400

avg. weight reduction per operator

6%

“Grab is the last piece we were missing for a fully automated flow of goods, no human touch them from inbound to outbound and we are really proud of that achievement compared to the size we have! And more importantly, Grab is key to succeeding with our ambitions of reducing weight picked by operators, Solwr are the only one offering a reliable mobile picking robots. We have already achieved a lot and Solwr keeps releasing upgrade, further improving speed and efficiency.”