Category: Press Release

VARGO^® welcomes 14 new employees

HILLIARD, Ohio, November 12, 2021 — VARGO^®, a leading provider of material-handling systems integration, warehouse execution software, and equipment solutions for major fulfillment and distribution centers, has announced the hiring of 14 new employees. Fueled by recent e-commerce growth and demand for its industry-leading e-commerce solutions, the company also has announced plans to expand its tech center and company headquarters in Columbus, Ohio.

“While the e-commerce fulfillment industry has underwent significant changes in response to spikes in consumer demand and labor shortages, many of these changes toward high-speed and high-accuracy delivery were already underway, but only accelerated by the pandemic,” said Bart Cera, VARGO^® president and COO. “For years, VARGO^® has been establishing relationships and developing software, advanced automation and robotic solutions, which have positioned us strongly in the market today.”

The company’s recent growth is driven by VARGO^®’s industry-leading e-commerce solutions and its ability to evaluate and integrate newer technologies using a holistic, agnostic approach. VARGO^®’s COFE^® (Continuous Order Fulfillment Engine) was the first and remains the most advanced Warehouse Execution System (WES.) COFE^® excels in complex e-commerce distribution environments through its ability to synchronize and sequence all the work necessary, in real-time, across all fulfillment resources (people, process and technologies.)

Just this year, VARGO^®’s COFE^® WES enabled one major clothing e-fulfillment facility with the capacity to process 1 million units a day. This allows companies to compete with the “Amazon effect” of same-day order fulfillment and speed to door. In addition, as a material handling equipment supplier, VARGO^® has existing partnerships with companies, enabling the use of robots and artificial intelligence to supplement or replace repetitive tasks in the fulfillment operation, to optimize client sites with automation that addresses labor shortages.

With this increased demand, VARGO^® has added new resources across many areas of its operations, including software, engineering, logistics and business analysts. Today, VARGO^® is excited to welcome the following new hires and internal promotions:

• Kelly Cahill, IT project manager and SCRUM master
• Vincent Chanthasene, project manager
• Keegan Doyle, promoted to technical support team lead
• Drew Eldred, implementation lead
• Brent Hasseman, software support specialist
• Geoffrey Heider, software support specialist
• Kit Hodges, software engineer
• Steve Hooper, senior project engineer
• Austin McNutt, DevOps analyst
• Deepali Paliwal, software business analyst
• Mamie-Kay Ramsay, project administrator
• Dave Rupnow, site manager
• Destiny Stallcup, business analyst
• Mark Torch, software support specialist
• Connor Vokac, mechanical engineer

Columbus, Ohio – VARGO^®, a leading provider of material-handling systems integration, warehouse execution software and equipment solutions for major fulfillment and distribution centers, has announced plans to expand its operations in the Columbus Region, investing approximately $4 million and creating 24 new jobs. Hiring for software, engineering, logistics and business analysts will begin in Q4 2021.

VARGO^® plans to move its Dublin Tech Center and Hilliard operations to a new location at 5555 Frantz Road in Dublin. When determining where to expand, VARGO^® evaluated numerous options to further expand its presence including in Austin, but decided to do so in Dublin. The company’s recent growth is partially driven by the pandemic’s impact on e-commerce and VARGO^®’s industry-leading e-commerce solutions. In response, VARGO^® is preparing to meet this increased forecasted demand for its technology solutions by expanding its key operations into a collaborative, tech-savvy office environment in Dublin.

“Consolidating our team in Central Ohio will enhance internal communication, facilitate more idea generation and promote teamwork, and Dublin was the perfect place for that comradery and collaboration to happen,” said VARGO^® President and COO Bart Cera. “Since establishing operations in the Columbus region 50 years ago, VARGO^® has found ongoing success in part because of the Columbus market’s long-time strength in the technology and logistics sectors. VARGO^® will continue to tap into the Region’s strong history of innovation in those sectors as we scale our operations even further.”

As digitization takes hold and customer expectations evolve, logistics companies face unprecedented change. However, VARGO^®’s real-time solutions continue to solve complex distribution challenges for its customers. In fact, VARGO^® is the only company that offers COFE^® (Continuous Order Fulfillment Engine), which was the first and remains the most advanced Warehouse Execution System. COFE^® excels in complex e-commerce distribution environments through its ability to synchronize and sequence all the work necessary, in real-time, across all the fulfillment work resources (people, process and technologies). The company also has operations in Mason, OH, Berkeley, CA, and Austin, TX.

“VARGO^® uses cutting edge technical solutions to improve material handling operations for retailers, manufacturers, wholesale and e-commerce distributors,” said Economic Development Administrator Eric Meyer. “Its expansion and consolidation in Dublin helps grow the city’s presence in information technology and logistics. We welcome them to their new headquarters in the city and know they will thrive here along with our growing tech cluster.”

Technology operations in the Columbus Region are deep and diverse, spanning industries such as logistics, finance and more. The Columbus Region is a global logistics hub that supports some of the world’s largest brands and top logistics service providers, making it a critical link in industrial and consumer supply chains. The Region’s location gives companies access to more of the U.S. population and employment base than any other major metro, providing unmatched accessibility. Within a day’s drive, you can reach 151 million people and 42,100 headquarters – that’s 46 percent of the country’s population base and 48 percent of headquarter operations.

“With innovative Central Ohio-based technology companies like VARGO^®, we will continue to see a generational opportunity to build upon successful expansions like this project and especially in the e-commerce and warehousing industries as they evolve and grow,” said JobsOhio President and CEO J.P. Nauseef.

Kindred announced a partnership agreement with VARGO^® to incorporate its artificial intelligence (AI) pick and place robotic solutions with VARGO^®’s warehouse execution system (WES) to enhance both parties’ solutions for retail and e-commerce fulfillment. Kindred has been working with Hilliard, Ohio-based VARGO^® since 2017 and partnered on e-commerce fulfillment system design and integration for Gap Inc. Gap has deployed more than 100 Kindred SORT robotic systems in combination with VARGO^®’s WES.

New solution will combine the power of Fetch’s autonomous mobile robots with VARGO^®’s leading warehouse execution software system to enable optimized picking

San Jose, CA, October 22, 2020 — Fetch Robotics, the leader in cloud robotics, today announced a partnership with VARGO^®, a leading provider of material-handling systems integration, warehouse execution software and equipment solutions for major fulfillment and distribution centers, to launch an integrated fulfillment solution. The new solution will combine the power of Fetch’s Autonomous Mobile Robots (AMRs) with Continuous Order Fulfillment Engine (COFE^®), VARGO^®’s industry-leading warehouse execution system (WES), to enable distribution centers to optimize order fulfillment with the latest technology in real time.

The growth of e-commerce and omnichannel fulfillment has pushed companies to optimize their order fulfillment processes to gain efficiencies and to do so with more speed and accuracy. This trend has been further accelerated by COVID-19, which has placed additional strain on distribution centers to increase throughput while keeping employees socially distanced. Many companies have begun applying more automation in their systems in response to this continued pressure and also integrating social distancing into the workflows by dynamically reassigning tasks to specific workers and orchestrating AMR movement. This enables distribution centers to maintain high worker productivity and high worker safety at the same time.

“Distribution centers today are under more pressure than ever before, both in terms of operational efficiency and worker safety. To contend with steadily growing order volumes and an ongoing labor shortage, distribution and fulfillment centers must embrace smarter technology to keep fulfillment operations running,” said Stefan Nusser, Chief Product Officer at Fetch Robotics. “COFE^®’s history of providing system-wide pick optimization and orchestration across different workflows and types of automation equipment makes it a perfect complement to robot-assisted picking.”

The combined solution from Fetch and VARGO^® enables a single system to provide optimized piece, batch and case picking workflows with payloads up to 1 1/2 tons for e-commerce, retail distribution and omnichannel operations. The COFE^® WES, built on over five decades of warehouse industry know-how, is the only WES that controls all the processes that take place inside a distribution center, from material handling equipment to the devices, people and processes. COFE^®’s “pull-based” fulfillment optimization can yield efficiency gains of over 30 percent compared to sites driven by traditional “waved/push-based” warehouse management systems. When combined with Fetch’s AMRs, COFE^® can offer further efficiency gains by allowing workers to spend more time picking as opposed to manually moving material throughout a facility and can use insights about overall warehouse operations to improve robot workflows.

“As e-commerce fulfillment operators face ever-increasing pressure to reduce labor and deliver higher levels of production in a more scalable and flexible way, the combination of VARGO^® and Fetch Robotics, under this alliance, provides a powerful and compelling fulfillment solution,” said Bart J. Cera, president and COO of VARGO^®. “We are excited about our company’s formal alignment with Fetch Robotics to further deliver industry-leading, robust and expansive solutions for the challenges that e-commerce and distribution operations face.”

About Fetch Robotics

Fetch Robotics is an award-winning intralogistics automation company headquartered in Silicon Valley. By combining autonomous mobile robotics with the power of the cloud, the Fetch Cloud Robotics Platform provides on-demand automation solutions for material handling and inventory management, with the power to find, track, and move almost anything in any facility. Fetch Robotics’ solutions and services are deployed in leading distribution, fulfillment, and manufacturing centers around the world, augmenting workforces to drive increased efficiency and productivity. For more information, please visit www.fetchrobotics.com or follow the company on Twitter @FetchRobotics.

HILLIARD, Ohio (Sept. 14, 2020) — VARGO^®, a leading provider of material-handling systems integration, warehouse execution software and equipment solutions for major fulfillment and distribution centers, today announced that it has developed a cloud-based version of its Warehouse Execution System (WES). The cloud-based version of the WES is now an option as part of VARGO^®’s rollout of COFE^® 4.

VARGO^®’s Continuous Order Fulfillment Engine (COFE^®) is the industry’s first waveless warehouse execution system (WES) software that organizes, synchronizes and optimizes for e-commerce orders and powers numerous leading retailers’ fulfillment centers.

This cloud-based version of COFE^® is best suited to run off-premises as a cloud solution platform for low-mechanization fulfillment centers, according to Michael McSweeny, director of software at VARGO^®. “Cloud-based solutions are attractive to chief information officers because they can provide a cost-savings and off-load hardware and IT security maintenance activities,” McSweeny said.

“With the growing trend in cloud-provided services, we are excited about adding this new deployment model to our product offering. With this cloud option, we are also offering a SaaS (software as a service) pricing model to reduce the burden of necessary upfront capital expenditure spend,” said Bart Cera, president and COO of VARGO^®. “VARGO continues to lead the industry in the WES space and these latest product enhancements and pricing flexibility further demonstrate the trend-setting ways in which we have impacted the e-commerce fulfillment industry.”

Several new features — social distance picking and enhanced order mining logic for example — are also available with the COFE^® 4 release. In addition, McSweeny said, COFE^® 4 is now also capable of running on Oracle’s version of Linux 7 as well as Red Hat / IBM.  More information about COFE® and how it organizes and optimizes order fulfillment, can be found here.