Fives Pushes Beyond Core Capabilities

AutomationMesh had the opportunity to sit down with Brad Perry, Director of Warehouse & Distribution Sales for Fives Intralogistics Corp., at the recently held MODEX exhibition in Atlanta. Perry explained how Fives has continued to evolve by offering expanded products, services and capabilities outside the core technologies it’s known for.

One of the key demonstrations at MODEX was Fives’ new goods-to-person solution, which uses a dual-robot approach to separate high-density vertical storage from horizontal transport, orchestrated by AI-driven software.

Fives acquired Caja Robotics in September of 2025, and the newly integrated system, known as “Caja by Fives,” incorporates Caja’s AMRs, robotic handling and software alongside Fives’ existing warehouse and logistics solutions.

Later this year, the company will release a Brownfield version of Caja by Fives, allowing the company to retrofit existing warehouses without changing the racking or storage system. This could be a huge advantage to companies who aren’t yet ready to build an entirely new warehouse from scratch.

“Maybe they can't brute force it anymore,” Perry says. “Maybe they are growing too fast and they say, I can't handle another 10% year over year growth. We can start automating that for them, keep the people that are there, move them down to pick stations or workstations, processing orders, and do it in a phased approach.”

According to Perry, one of the things that sets Fives apart is the comprehensive suite of tools and integration capabilities the company offers. “There are lots of AMR companies,” Perry says, “but Fives sells the turnkey integration.”

Instead of a customer having to identify a system integrator with the right connections, experience and know-how to assemble the right technology for them—or worse yet, trying to do it on their own—they can find the solution they need under the Fives umbrella, Perry says.

“We’re building our solutions upstream and downstream,” Perry says. “We're bringing together a global group to continue to build off the Fives name.”

For many years, that Fives name has represented an expertise in one key technology: singulators.

“That's what we've always been known for,” Perry says, adding that many of the world’s largest parcel and postal facilities have relied on Fives for their automated systems. “But we do so much more. We offer turnkey integration. We're outside of postal and parcel. We're accelerating into warehouse and distribution. We're taking the 40 years of U.S. knowledge that we've had and we're expanding beyond.”

Sorting the Unsortable

Aside from Caja by Fives, one of the ways Fives is looking to expand is by tackling challenges that others won’t touch. Perry calls it “sorting the unsortable.”

When it comes to sortation, many logistics technologies companies have a limited range of sizes, shapes and weights they work with.

“Everybody likes to work with a range of packages that are really pretty and nice to handle,” Perry says. “A couple of years ago we said, what if we grab the tails? What if we grabbed the small stuff? What if we grabbed the polybags?”

“We took the concept of a shoe sorter, and instead of having the shoes that slide across, we've replaced it with a carrier with wheels. And so now the product rides on top and you get to handle ugly packages that normally would slide under a shoe sorter.”

This prevents the polybag from sliding under the shoes, Perry says. “So we're starting to handle really lightweight stuff on the base platform of a shoe sorter.”

But it’s not just the small stuff, Perry says. In fact, maybe even more impressive are the items on the other end of the spectrum: “the truly ugly, heavy stuff.”

“We started turning pallets, tires, trailer hitches, kitchen sinks,” Perry says. “We’re talking about packages that can be nine feet long. Think about carpets. We're talking about basketball goals. You know, they're wide and they're long. They're 175 pounds.

“We've deployed those across some of the largest players in parcel, the largest players in e-com, where they said, I just don't want to move this heavy thing. I don't want to team lift anymore.”

What's next for Fives?

Like all technology companies, Fives will have to devote a lot of thought and energy and innovation into artificial intelligence. For Perry, it’s more than building better and better AI into the company’s software. It’s understanding how customers are using AI, and adapting to it.

“Customers are already using AI to their advantage,” Perry says. “Customers are coming up knowing what a system should cost. It's not just kicking the tires. They now know whether they're talking about a $5 million solution or a $50 million solution, before they ever get there. I've fact checked some of this, and it's scary how good it is. There's so much knowledge available, and it's on an exponential growth. What's next for Fives? It's adapting to that.”

Perry also hopes that his company will continue to push the limits of robotic technology.

“Humanoids might not be the answer today,” Perry says. “It's not worth it if you spend a million dollars on a robot that can load six parts per minute. But I love that they’re pushing the limits. If I had to predict for Fives, I'd say we're going to get more heavily into robotics.”

And what will be the result, Perry says? “We're going to see levels of automation that weren't possible a year ago.”

www.fivesgroup.com/smart-automation-solutions