What Is Goods-to-Person?
Goods-to-person (GTP) flips the oldest rule of warehousing: instead of pickers walking to inventory, machines bring inventory to pickers standing at ergonomic stations. Walking, which consumes well over half of a traditional picker's day, disappears.
GTP is a workflow, not a single machine. Behind every GTP station is a storage and transport engine, and picking the right engine for your order profile is the entire game.
What Powers Goods-to-Person
Cube storage grids
Robots dig bins from a dense grid and deliver them to ports. Highest density, modular growth.
Shuttle-fed stations
Shuttle aisles feed totes to pick stations at the highest sustained rates.
Mobile-robot GTP
AMRs carry shelves or totes to pick stations, fast to deploy with minimal fixed infrastructure.
Mini-load fed stations
Crane-served totes buffered to stations, a proven mid-rate approach.
Pick-to-light stations
The human interface: lights, screens, and put walls that make station picking nearly error-proof.
How MTLI Works With Goods-to-Person
Design & Engineering
It starts with your data, not a catalog: throughput, product profile, building, and budget. Our engineers design the right answer, with stamped drawings and permits where structures are involved.
Supply & Procurement
We source across 500+ manufacturer partners worldwide, brand-agnostic, new and used where it makes sense, with volume pricing passed through to you.
Installation & Commissioning
Our own crews install, integrate, and commission, phased around live operations when needed, with an MTLI supervisor on site every day and 98% on-time delivery.
Support & Lifecycle
After handover we stay: preventative maintenance programs, inspections, controls support, and 24/7 options, designed around your uptime targets.
Where MTLI Can Help You
- E-commerce operations drowning in single-line orders
- Facilities with high SKU counts and small items
- Operations that cannot hire enough pickers at any wage
- Cold environments where reducing person-time matters
- Phased automation programs starting with one pick cell
- Integrating GTP output into existing conveyor and sortation
From under $100K to $100M+ turnkey. A specialist calls within one business day.
Common Questions, Answered
What pick rates does GTP achieve?
Station rates of 300 to 650+ lines per hour are typical, three to six times a walking picker, with accuracy above 99.9% when paired with light-directed stations.
Can GTP start small?
Yes, and it should. A single-station cell with a compact grid or robot fleet can start under $500K and scale as volume grows. Our 24-month roadmap approach phases it so each stage pays for the next.
Does GTP replace my conveyor?
No, they work together: GTP handles storage and picking while conveyor and sortation move orders to pack and ship. We design and install both as one scope.
How does MTLI stay objective on which system to use?
We are brand-agnostic with 500+ manufacturer partnerships worldwide. Our engineering starts from your order data, and our recommendation is the system that wins on your numbers.