In striving to keep up with changing B2C patterns, like e-tailing, conveyor suppliers offer ever more equipment designs, making the right choice of equipment a harder exercise. But if buyers are unaware of the full range of equipment solutions they risk buying a solution less cost effective than would have been the case. This is where an experienced conveyor consultant could be useful, because while the major equipment suppliers may offer a good range of workable solutions, equipment not in their range could be more profitable.
To some extent, the conveyor’s choice will be influenced by the working environment. Roller conveyors, for example, are at home in both production and storage settings but overhead conveyors are more likely to be seen in factory production sites, where they can prove more cost-effective than alternative handling means, like forklifts, AGVs, trolleys and even flat-bed conveyors, depending on the conveyed product.
It may still be the case that these overhead conveyors are underappreciated, owing to beliefs that they are costly, noisy, power hungry, contaminatory and prone to chain stretch. But major advances have designed out some of industry’s concerns. A major leap forward came when these conveyors harnessed IT to a level of control that turned them into ‘factories in the sky,’ allowing assembly workers to carry out work while on the move. Their benefits can be many, including productivity gains, safety improvements, lower damage levels, build quality of conveyed goods, space savings, shorter customer lead times, lower stocks and capacity gains, leading to payback in under two years.
In warehousing, the need to go aisle-less gathers momentum as e-tailing, for example, demands more break bulk work, quickly and accurately for next-day delivery. Storage space can be expensive so there is pressure to maximise the storage cube, and in the process deliver goods to the pickers more quickly. A number of aisle-less storage systems have been developed over recent years but because of their relatively high investment costs it’s important to compare them carefully, based on handled product type, size and throughput rates. Once chosen, but no yet ordered, the equipment should be seen in action on a site visit.
One aisle-less storage system worth careful consideration is Cimcorp’s 3D Shuttle, a spin-off from their well-established Multipick product, a gantry robot specifically for handling plastic totes. The big difference between Multipick and the 3D Shuttle is that the former has a floor storage area where the customers are storing stacks of totes. Every stack is one SKU. Multipick is handling stacks and order picking from different stacks to create a customer stack for direct shop delivery. “With the 3D Shuttle,” says Cimcorp’s Vice President, Mr Kai Tuomisaori, “every tote in the system can be a different SKU, because we can break the stack in any position and take out any of the totes in just 10 seconds.” The difference is ten fold. A 500-stack Multipick could have only 500 SKUs, but the 3D Shuttle can handle 5,000 SKUs in the same space.
So how does the 3D Shuttle compare with existing miniload and multi shuttle systems cost wise? The 3D Shuttle offers more storage and SKUs per square metre. There is very little steel, few components and the minimum number of drives. Not only is the Shuttle aisle-less, it dispenses with racking and shelving – only the floor is used to stack the totes. This has the additional advantage that in case of a breakdown or power failure every tote is accessible to allow manual bypass. Only a normal ceiling-mounted sprinkler system is needed, which is much cheaper than an in-rack system. Owing to its easy cleaning it can be more readily commended for food applications.
One area of automated warehouse operations still scantily regarded is packaging and that must include the various pallet types and materials. Poor quality timber pallets are one of the greatest problems for warehouse automation. This writer visited a West country user of high bay, manually-driven stacker cranes to find about 10% of the timber pallets, running into thousands, had to be pulled out of the store owing to poor quality. It was a humbling and expensive experience.
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