Despite the great advances in sortation conveyors over the last 30 years the need to continue conveyor innovation remains strong as the remorseless rise in e-commerce demands ever-more expectations from the conveyor, now the most critical MH device at the heart of any frenetic distribution centre. Users have, of course, come to expect higher sortation speeds along with energy savings and specialisation for specific conveyed products. The Dematic group, for example, now incorporating the SDI Group, offer cross belt and flex sorters handling up to 80,000 items an hour. Their new products are aimed at being energy-saving by cutting the number of drives and featuring increased speeds of up to 3 mt/sec. Its FlexSort SL2 is a next generation, high capacity sliding shoe sorer designed for improved performance, ease of maintenance and lower ownership costs. It can sort 200 cartons/min at 400 ft/min. Its automatic speed control allows the sorter to vary operating speeds according to the actual volume of products flowing onto the sorter. Maintenance is made easier by allowing fast, easy slat removal, there is no chain to be lubricated, and side thrust wheels ensure smooth slat flow.
Over in the Vanderlande camp the company’s new Traysorter focuses on modularity and flexibility, to give higher operational efficiency and lower energy consumption. It can be fitted with various interchangeable tray types to meet specific sorting needs. In the past, fast sortation conveyors were not cheap but Vanderlande is keen to emphasise that its Traysorter is affordable, state-of-art with an optimized modular design resulting in the smallest footprint per destination and a quick ROI. Little maintenance is needed and it uses sustainable materials such as durable wood for its core structure.
Knapp, best known, perhaps, for its goods-to-picker systems, like its competitors never ceases to create improved designs. Streamline is its latest development which combines quiet transport with energy efficiency and cost-effective maintenance, achieved through parts commonality.
As always, however, choosing the most suitable conveyor type to meet current and future business needs will frequently be a critical factor. Before any investment decision can be made, the handled products’ profiles and projected flow rates must be studied to match them to the appropriate machine, though to some extent that has been made easier by increased flexibility and modularity of the kinds mentioned above. If only handling one type of product, like garment hangers, then the choosing exercise is made easier by conveyors geared exclusively for that product, like those from SDI (Dematic). The fragility of conveyed loads must also be carefully considered. As a rule, sorters do not work very well when widely ranging goods are fed intermittently. They also hate loose packaging like trailing polyethylene or twine which can so easily snag on tilt tray sorters.
To achieve acceptable conveyor paybacks, machines should run for long, steady periods during each day. But a word of caution on top sorting speeds. Users should remember that they are always based on the best situations, i.e. standard size/weight of cases and a consistent, steady input. Real situations are often not standard so claimed sorting speeds should be treated cautiously. For sorting speeds to be meaningful it will be necessary to consider the impact of sorter peripheral elements like associated infeeds and even loading bays. There is little point in sorting goods rapidly if there is a bottleneck on the loading bay or checking goods inwards is painfully slow.
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