Features and innovations
Feb 2024
5 min.
Features and innovations
Our customer HAKRO is increasingly relying on automated and digitized processes in its sustainability strategy. Digital and automated? Of course, our SuPCIS-L8 warehouse management software and SuPCIS-MFC material flow computer are a must. Together with the new fully comprehensive palletizing system, we help HAKRO achieve its logistics goals. We support the employees in their daily work in logistics and relieve them physically. What does this look like in practice?
The palletizing system consists of a tote and a pallet conveyor system including control technology from Gebhardt and palletizing robots from ro-ber. After the delivered cartons have been unloaded from the truck and placed on the tote conveyor line, they pass several detection points with scanners and sensors. These record various information about the cartons. The scanners read the label on the carton, the so-called loading equipment label (LHM label), which uniquely identifies the carton plus contents. With the help of the sensors, a contour check is carried out, whereby length, width and height are recorded and the volume of the respective carton is determined from this. In addition, a scale is integrated into the container conveyor system to determine the weight of the carton.
The container conveyor control system transmits the recorded data to the warehouse management system. Based on this data, a decision is made as to whether the carton can be palletized automatically by the palletizing robot and moved to the palletizing system or whether the carton is palletized manually and thus discharged to the manual palletizing station. The transport order is assigned by the MFC to the container conveyor control system. If, for example, the contours of the carton are out of tolerance or the LHM label could not be detected, the carton will not pass through the palletizer.
In the palletizing system, the cartons travel to transfer stabs, where they are picked up by the robot and transported to the respective target pallet. The cartons are usually formed as a pair, as the palletizing robot can transport two cartons at the same time. Single trips are only made if no other carton with the same sorting criteria is detected on the tote conveyor line in the specified time period or if it is a no-read carton. In such a case, the LHM label could not be read by the scanner at the beginning, so that the information about the carton and the article it contains is missing.
Once the carton or pair of cartons has arrived at the transfer point of the tote conveyor, our warehouse management system instructs the palletizing robot to transport the totes to the target pallet determined by the warehouse management system. Once the pallet is full, the Warehouse Management System or MFC prompts the pallet conveyor to automatically remove the pallet. After the full pallet has been removed, a new pallet is automatically fed from the pallet stack.
With the introduction of the palletizing robots, the employees save themselves heavy physical work and, above all, kilometers traveled per day.
HAKRO and its sustainability strategy:
