DC Velocity - February 2018

You just have to love all of today’s shopping and shipping options. Unless, of course, your distribution centers aren’t ready to fulfill all those orders.

The omni-channel and e-fulfillment automation solutions we deliver to retail clients are based on decades of designing and integrating specialized distribution centers and complex material handling systems.

For a review of our success stories and to start a discussion about an automation solution for your operation, contact us at:

info@peachstate.com 800.998.6517 www.peachstate.com

Keep customers happy with automation solutions that deliver what they want, when and where they want it.

the packing is completed, three conveyor lines move the products to an adjacent building for palletizing.

The palletizing building contains two complete automated palletizing systems that work independently of each other—one equipped with three delivery magazines and the other with two. The palletizers are designed for optimal flexibility and can handle 95 percent of the varieties of citrus processed by Bee Sweet. They can also accommodate six different packaging types, including industry-standard 40-pound cartons, open-top nested trays, telescopic cases, reusable plastic containers, and euro cartons, as well as a variety of pallet sizes. On top of that, the system can handle 29 different stacking patterns to accommodate variations in case size and pallet footprint.

In addition to the two automated palletizers, the building also houses a manual palletizing operation. Currently, about 80 percent of total volume is palletized by the automated equipment, with manual handling reserved for items like odd-shaped boxes or partial pallet loads.

Cases bound for the automated palletizing area enter the 31,140-square-foot palletizing building on a mezzanine level. After passing through scan tunnels, the cases move in-line to one of two Honeywell Intelligrated-supplied IntelliSort sliding-shoe sorters, each of which feeds one of the palletizers. Shoes on each sorter automatically slide across the conveying surface to divert products to 28 accumulation lanes used to gather cases.

Cases remain in the accumulation lane until the full number required to build a pallet load have been gathered. Once all the cases have been collected, they’re conveyed single file from the mezzanine to the floor level of the building, where the palletizers reside.

As cases enter the palletizer system, a series of wheels turn to adjust the cases’ orientation as well as position them left or right so that they slide into specific positions to create a single pallet layer. The number of cases in a layer varies according to pallet and case size. For example, it takes nine of the standard 40-pound cartons (the industry standard)