An innovative solution to a logistics challenge
Logistics services are an ever-growing activity. Immense quantities of containers with the most diverse goods packed in boxes must therefore be unloaded every day. The automatic palletisation of these boxes is a time-consuming and labour-intensive process that can best be automated.
However, this is a difficult task when using traditional articulated arm robots. After all, containers often contain many types of boxes, each of which must be stacked on individual pallets. Because an articulated arm robot has a circular reach, the number of pallets it can stack simultaneously is limited.
The challenge for traditional articulated arm robots when palletising from container
A traditional articulated arm robot has a limited reach because of its circular working area. This means it is unable to stack very many pallets at the same time without physical repositioning of the pallets or the robot itself. This results in inefficiency in the palletising process, especially when there is a large variety of boxes coming from a single container.
The advantages of a gantry robot palletiser
With a gantry robot palletiser, however, this is not the case. Indeed, the portal frame can be made so long that the robot moving over it can reach all pallets. This offers much greater flexibility and efficiency when stacking different types of boxes on different pallets.
Implementation in the frozen food industry
A logistics provider in the frozen food industry deployed our Spider palletiser to do the job. Containers containing up to four different boxes are unloaded after which the label is scanned so that the type of box can be identified. Each type of box is then automatically stacked on an individual pallet, each according to their specific stacking pattern. Empty pallets are taken from a stack by the same Spider robot and placed on the stacking positions.
Automation of palletising from container
Once a pallet is fully stacked, it is automatically removed to a centrally located pallet wrapping machine. After wrapping, a pallet label is automatically applied with the information of the stacked boxes. The pallets are then removed to the freezer storage area. This automation saves considerable time and reduces the need for manual labour.
Conclusion
The choice of a Spider gantry robot palletiser was an obvious one for this logistics provider. Due to the compactness of the setup, the advanced box recognition system and the integration of a central pallet wrapping machine, the choice of a total solution with this versatile robot was obvious. The implementation of this automated solution offers significant advantages in terms of efficiency, speed and accuracy when palletising various boxes from containers, and is a good example of how modernisation and innovation are transforming the logistics sector.