Fujifilm Transforms Direct-to-Consumer Fulfillment with Flexible Automation

About Fujifilm

Leading Provider of Personalized Photo Products

Fujifilm is a leading provider of personalized photo products, serving a growing direct-to-consumer (DTC) market. Known for high-quality prints, photo gifts, and custom merchandise, the company operates complex fulfillment processes to support a wide variety of product types and fluctuating order volumes.

The Challenge

Managing Variable Demand and Rising Fulfillment Costs

As e-commerce demand for personalized products continued to grow, Fujifilm faced increasing pressure to scale its fulfillment operations while maintaining efficiency and cost control. The company needed to improve throughput, reduce manual labor dependency, and support a highly variable order profile driven by seasonal peaks and shifting consumer demand.

Unlike traditional retail fulfillment, Fujifilm’s operations required the ability to handle a wide range of product sizes—from small photo prints to bulkier customized items like mugs—while ensuring accurate, order-level sortation for individual customers. At the same time, any new solution had to be implemented without disrupting ongoing production and fulfillment workflows.

The Solution

Tompkins Robotics tSort

To meet these demands, Fujifilm deployed the Tompkins Robotics tSort system, an autonomous mobile robot (AMR)-based sortation solution designed for flexibility, scalability, and high-throughput operations. The system enables dynamic sortation by allowing items to be inducted at any station and routed to any destination—an essential capability for direct-to-consumer environments with constantly changing order profiles.

With a two-level design, tSort increased sortation capacity within FUJIFILM’s existing footprint while supporting nearly 1,000 destinations that can be reassigned throughout the day. Unlike traditional conveyor-based systems, tSort requires no fixed infrastructure, enabling faster deployment and easy scalability through modular expansion—without disrupting ongoing operations.

The Results

Scalable Throughput and Significant Cost Savings

With the implementation of the tSort system, FUJIFILM transformed its direct-to-consumer fulfillment operations into a more flexible, efficient, and scalable process. The solution enabled the company to increase throughput, reduce costs, and better manage peak demand variability.

Key results include:

• Increased sortation capacity to handle up to 1,000 customer orders simultaneously
• Reduce manual labor costs by more than 54% through automation and streamlined workflows
• Achieved full return on investment in less than one year
• Reduce employee attrition by more than 50% during peak season through an ergonomically designed system that improves comfort and operator experience
• Improved overall operational flexibility to support fluctuating demand and product mix

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