DC Velocity - November 2012

ny ships out 700 million cases each year. On top of that, the process required a lot of bending and reaching on the workers’ part. So the company was eager to find an alternative, explains Andy Fisher, senior director of warehouse operations for Frito-Lay North America (US and Canada).

In 1995, the company approached integrator Wynright about automating the process. Fisher says Wynright was a natural place to turn for help. The two had worked together on a number of DC racking and conveyor projects since 1982, and over the years, the provider had offered many useful suggestions for improving Frito-Lay’s operations. “They really knew our business and understood our [distribution centers’] wants and needs,” he says.

The team of engineers and project
managers assigned to the task kicked
off the project by going straight to
the source, observing workers as
they built stacks by gently tossing
cases on top of one another. After
watching the workers
load trucks, they then
tried it themselves.

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veyor. To create the stack, workers would simply change the angle of the conveyor so that the cases would land in the right place, according to Aurora.

To test the concept, one member of the team actually stood inside a trailer holding a small piece of conveyor while other team members experimented with changing the conveyor’s speed and angle. The team discovered that at a speed of 400 feet per minute, they were able to stack the cases quickly without causing damage to the product.

Once the two parties had settled on the general concept, Wynright designed a conveyor with a series of arms that shoot the cases out. An operator working inside the truck aims the equipment, which Frito-Lay nicknamed “T. Rex.” The conveyor then rises up automatically, and the next case is lobbed on top of the first.

With the semiautomated solution, Frito-Lay could now load trucks twice as fast as it could via the manual process, says Fisher. The solution also offered ergonomic advantages, since workers no longer had to bend, reach, and stretch to position the boxes.

The solution worked so well for Frito-Lay that the two companies filed for a joint patent for the T. Rex truck loader. “Once the thing was designed and built, we looked at the concept and realized that it’s really a unique application of available technologies—of how you can put together all these simple technologies and make them into one system that will do the job,” Aurora recalls.

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FROM DINOSAURS TO ROBOTS

While it was Frito-Lay that came to Wynright with the general concept for a loading system in 1995, 10 years later it was the other way around. This time, Wynright approached Frito-Lay with an idea for an upgrade. Wynright’s idea was to take the worker out of the process and instead, use a mobile robot that would move into the trailer, build the load, and then back out again.