Pallet conveyors are a basic element in materials dealing with and finish of line operations. Choosing the proper conveyor can have a direct affect on delivery occasions, facility format, and general productiveness.
The proper pallet conveyor can scale back wasteful guide labor steps, optimize your house, and even open the doorways to automated palletizing options. Nonetheless, the fallacious selection might result in larger prices, wasteful inefficiencies, and stock bottlenecks .
That can assist you keep away from these pitfalls, this information walks you thru the ten important steps for selecting the correct conveyor on your palletizing.
Laying the Groundwork for an Improved Palletizing Course of
Deciding on the appropriate conveyor is greater than only a sensible buying determination. It may be a strategic transfer to reinforce your materials dealing with course of.
If you’re utilizing guide palletizing — the place staff stack pallets with merchandise — the appropriate conveyor can assist to cut back harmful ergonomic points that may result in bodily damage and even affect worker psychological well being.
Ryan Weaver, VP of Industrial at Robotiq, explains:
“Palletizing is without doubt one of the most labor-intensive duties within the manufacturing and delivery course of. The excessive danger of damage from repeatedly selecting and stacking heavy containers makes it a danger for the corporate. Moreover, the boring and repetitive nature of the duty means it is laborious to search out and retain staff prepared to do the job.”
If you’re utilizing automated palletizing, there are various additional advantages. The proper conveyor can assist to optimize your automated course of to create a seamless, environment friendly workflow. When mixed with robotic palletizing, the conveyor varieties a system that helps scale back widespread pallet issues like loading inefficiency, misalignment, product harm, and inconsistent pallet high quality.
Whether or not you’re utilizing guide or automated palletizing, the conveyor lays the groundwork for an environment friendly and scalable palletizing course of.
10 Steps to Select the Proper Pallet Conveyor
Selecting your supreme pallet conveyor requires a transparent understanding of your operational wants, future targets, and constraints that have an effect on the deployment.
Listed below are 10 steps that will help you make clear which pallet conveyor will meet each your present and future imaginative and prescient on your finish of line:
Step 1: Determine on Automated or Guide Palletizing
First, you should determine if you’ll use a guide palletizing course of or an automatic one. This may radically have an effect on the selection of conveyor. If you have not thought of automating your palletizing course of earlier than, now is an efficient time to consider it.
Guide palletizing is a viable choice for small-scale operations with rare packaging calls for or finances constraints. On this case, you’ll search for conveyors that improve guide palletizing.
Automated palletizing affords vital benefits, together with higher packing consistency, enhanced office security, and room for scalable development. Robotic palletizing has turn into a powerful strategic transfer for a lot of firms within the final 5 years.
Step 2: Map Your Current Course of First
Earlier than choosing a conveyor, take time to map out your present guide course of. This can be a key step within the Lean Robotics Framework that we at all times recommend earlier than folks add new know-how.
Robotiq’s Utility Skilled Marc-Antoine Lacasse explains the significance of this step in our free palletizing eLearning course:
“Guide job mapping is step one to actually perceive the appliance nicely. Ask questions like: What’s the subsequent step within the manufacturing line? How does the pallet depart the cell? Take the time to finish the whole course of and observe which duties have been value-added and which have been downtimes.”
To assist with this, obtain our free guide job map template.
Step 3: Determine on Centralized or Decentralized Palletizing
You must then take a step again and have a look at how your palletizing cell matches within the general stream of your complete facility. Particularly, determine in case you are utilizing centralized or decentralized palletizing.
Centralized palletizing includes gathering all product traces right into a single location. This may be an environment friendly method for high-volumes and might decrease the ground house required on your palletizing cell. Nonetheless, it’d require a extra advanced community of conveyors you probably have loads of product traces.
Decentralized palletizing deploys smaller, impartial palletizing stations for processing single or small numbers of product traces. This may enable for larger flexibility however might require a bigger funding upfront.
Step 4: Outline the Conveyor’s Function
To decide on the appropriate pallet conveyor, begin by defining its particular goal. This needs to be pretty easy after going by way of the earlier steps.
Ask questions like:
- Will the conveyor transport unfastened merchandise, pallets, or each?
- If transporting merchandise, will they be packaged or unpackaged?
- If transporting pallets, what properties of the pallets themselves would possibly affect the kind of conveyor?
Every pallet sort has distinctive traits that may have an effect on your selection of conveyor. For instance, pallets with fashioned toes can improve the soundness and longevity of storage, and are nicely suited to drag practice conveyors.
Step 5: Make clear the Operational Properties of Your Conveyor
There’s a staggering variety of conveyor varieties. Earlier than even wanting on the particular person varieties, it is useful to make clear precisely what operational properties you want out of your conveyor.
For instance:
- Load capability — How heavy are the pallets or gadgets that the conveyor will transport?
- Setting — Is the surroundings soiled or contain excessive or low temperatures?
- Loading and unloading procedures — How will gadgets be loaded onto the conveyor and unloaded at their vacation spot?**
- Conveyor pace — How shortly do gadgets want to maneuver to maintain the right cadence inside your product workflow?
- Object properties — What properties of the merchandise themselves would possibly have an effect on conveyor selection? For instance, are gadgets delicate, heavy, or require particular remedy.
The selections you make now will provide help to slender down the choices.
Step 6: Decide the Appropriate Kind of Conveyor
Now, it is time to take a look at the various kinds of conveyor and evaluate them towards the wants of your software.
Among the many conveyor varieties embrace:
- Chain pushed conveyors — These are pushed by chains and are perfect for powerful, soiled environments and high-load pallets.
- Drag chain conveyors — As a substitute of pulling with a series, these pull the load. They’re comparatively compact and work nicely in high-temperature environments.
- Plastic belt powered conveyors — These are perfect for hundreds that may’t be supported by chains or rollers, in addition to merchandise that should not contact one another.
- Gravity conveyors — These unpowered conveyors use gravity to maneuver merchandise. They are often easy and cost-effective.
- Poly-v energy curler conveyors — Just like chain conveyors, these use a plastic belt as a substitute of a series. This makes them quieter and appropriate for mild hundreds.
- Slat conveyors — Comprising a chain-driven loop of slats, these present a inflexible, flat floor. They’re typically used within the automotive trade.
Step 7: Take into account the Palletizing Cell Structure
Your palletizing cell format can have an amazing affect on efficiency. By minimizing pointless actions, you possibly can optimize your cycle time and enhance effectivity, particularly with robotic palletizing.
Numerous format components can have an effect on the cycle time, together with distances between parts, the peak of the conveyor, and dimensions of the pallets.
Robotiq Functions Engineer Gabriel Boucher explains:
“The format of a palletizing cell is often pretty easy. Nonetheless, some small modifications will have an effect on the efficiency of the cell rather a lot. We will enhance the cycle time by merely transferring round some parts.”
Step 8: Calculate the Return on Funding (ROI)
Understanding the return on funding (ROI) and payback interval on your new conveyor system is important for making knowledgeable choices. By analyzing the long-term affect, it helps you justify the preliminary price and in addition demonstrates the financial savings you may make.
Robotic palletizing typically permits you to get a quicker payback interval than merely buying a conveyor for guide palletizing.
Our ROI calculator permits you to get a transparent understanding of prices, financial savings, and timeframes so you possibly can work out how shortly your funding will repay.
Step 9: Set Your self Up for Future Scalability
Buying a pallet conveyor should not simply be a “fast repair.” When choosing a conveyor, take into consideration the way you wish to scale your palletizing operations sooner or later. Development typically brings elevated throughput and new necessities on your finish of line processes.
Versatile options, comparable to these constructed with modular parts, mean you can simply combine additional parts to your palletizing cell to deal with such modifications. This flexibility is why so many firms are turning to collaborative robotic palletizing. The inherent flexibility of such robotic options makes it simple to scale and optimize palletizing lengthy into the longer term.
Step 10: Put money into the Proper Automation Options
If you’re contemplating automating your palletizing in addition to including a brand new conveyor, it is very important select the appropriate automation resolution.
Investing in palletizing automation would not have to be a tricky determination. With the appropriate steerage and a transparent understanding of the chances, you possibly can guarantee seamless integration that addresses each your instant wants and future scalability.
Learn our The Automated Palletizing Purchaser’s Information to get a easy, action-oriented information by way of this course of.
Must automate palletizing as nicely?
At Robotiq, we assist producers with automated palletizing options that mix the pace, flexibility, and precision of robotics with easy-to-use software program.
No matter your present palletizing wants, our vary of palletizing options not solely enhances productiveness but in addition builds adaptability into your operations, enabling you to remain aggressive in in the present day’s altering markets.
Contact us in the present day to debate your palletizing concepts and learn the way we will take your materials dealing with course of to the following degree!
What sort of conveyors have you ever tried? Inform us within the feedback beneath or be part of the dialogue on LinkedIn or Fb.
