Kiva Systems has added another notch to its belt with the announcement that the home furnishings retailer Crate and Barrel had selected the Kiva Mobile Fulfillment System (Kiva MFS) to automate its Tracy, Calif., distribution complex. At first the announcement seemed unremarkable, particularly as it comes on the heels of a number of recent wins for Kiva, including Saks Incorporated, Boston Scientific, Gap Inc., Zappos, Walgreens, and others. However, a closer reading of the press release announcing the win touched on other issues that have important implications for the robotics industry. No, it wasn’t that Kiva now had a foot in the door of a company with $1.3 billion in sales across its 160 stores. That’s significant, but there is a larger story.

The Kiva announcement emphasized that Crate and Barrel’s Tracy distribution complex was the largest industrial facility in the country to achieve a gold designation from the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification program. Crate and Barrel takes pride in the achievement and considers it a major step in the company’s overall efforts to go green. Moreover, Crate and Barrel indicated that its choice of Kiva MFS was largely based on the system’s ability to reduce the warehouse’s carbon footprint.

The more cynical among you might attribute the carbon footprint details in the Crate and Barrel announcement, along with companies in general promoting their “green cred,” as a public relations stunt designed to charm (or shame) a gullible public into buying more of the right products. That is, their products. This position is wrong in more ways than one, but that doesn’t matter as the point is moot.

The fact is that whatever your beliefs on global climate change, sustainability, energy generation, and other environmental issues, green has joined the holy trinity of increased productivity, revenue generation, and cost savings as a primary selection criterion for products and services, including robotics products and services. This is especially true for industrial manufacturing, warehouse automation, and military technologies (especially as they relate to fuel savings). For many companies, going green can reduce costs (energy savings, for example) and drive revenue (green sales). But forward-thinking companies, along with leading business schools, also believe that other issues are at play, such as-dare I say-it is the right thing to do.