Full Case Palletizing and De-Palletizing Systems

Manual and Fully Automated Technologies Designed to Handle Full Cases/Totes

SKU proliferation is possibly the most important driving trend in logistics and material handling systems design. The building of mixed SKU, customer pallets is significantly impacted by this trend. To meet the challenge, System Logistics offers a complete range of palletizing solutions for retrieving cases from source pallets and placing them on customer pallets. Solutions vary from manual to fully automated and may use technologies ranging from voice picking to robots for pallet building. Due to the amount of labor employed in both case picking and palletizing, we have developed solutions that assist in both of these processes.

De-palletizing

De-palletizing is the process of stripping cases or layers of cases off of a single SKU pallet. Our de-palletizing system include:

• Picking tunnels: Source pallets are organized in “pick faces” in pick tunnels. Operators pick selected cases as directed by pick-to-light, voice picking or RF picking systems and place the cartons on a take-away conveyor or a pallet on a pallet jack.
• Manual picking stations: Source pallets can be delivered to stationary picking stations, eliminating walking and improving workplace ergonomics. Cartons are selected and placed either onto customer pallets or take-away conveyors, depending on the overall system design.
• Automatic picking stations: Source pallets are delivered to stations equipped with robotic devices that will select cartons and place them on a customer pallet or take-away conveyor, depending on the overall system design. A system including System Logistics’ Automated Picking Stations can include single case handling robots, multiple case handling robots or robots than can pick entire pallet layers. When layers are selected, descrambling equipment can be included that will singulate the cartons on case handling conveyors, sending them to downstream handling equipment carton by carton.

Palletizing

In many manufacturing environments such as food, beverage and consumer goods, both manual and automated palletizing systems are commonly seen. These solutions generally load a pallet with a single SKU for inventory purposes. In distribution, the challenge is to create a “customer” pallet that will contain many SKUs and often times will have many different shapes and sizes, sometimes on the same layer. Without partial or fully automated assistance, this process is labor intensive, non-ergonomic and error-prone. We have a variety of solutions to improve the palletizing process:

• Manual palletizing stations: Palletizing workstations, directly interfaced with delivery conveyors, can improve productivity, ergonomics and order accuracy. Both source pallets and customer pallets can be placed on ergonomic lifts, eliminating worker bending and twisting. Voice picking, RF picking and computer directed picking can also be integrated to improve accuracy and productivity.
• Robotic palletizing sub-systems: Many companies can supply palletizing robots; System Logistics differs by supplying a complete process. We ensure that cartons arrive at the robotic station in the sequence required by our proprietary “best fitting” software, with the goal to build a physically stable pallet, according to the business rules of our customers. This overall approach includes the integration of our Vertical Lift Sequencing units, our SYSTORE™ WMS software with “best fitting” algorithm and our own Gantry and Cartesian palletizing robots.

To learn more about any of our palletizing systems or any of our automated warehouse solutions, contact us today.

This post is also available in: Italian