Pallet conveyors are a elementary element in materials dealing with and finish of line operations. Selecting the best conveyor can have a direct influence on transport instances, facility structure, and general productiveness.
The correct pallet conveyor can scale back wasteful handbook labor steps, optimize your area, and even open the doorways to automated palletizing options. Nonetheless, the unsuitable alternative may result in increased 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 choosing the right conveyor to your palletizing.
Laying the Groundwork for an Improved Palletizing Course of
Deciding on the suitable conveyor is greater than only a sensible buying resolution. It may be a strategic transfer to reinforce your materials dealing with course of.
If you’re utilizing handbook palletizing — the place staff stack pallets with merchandise — the suitable conveyor might help to scale back harmful ergonomic points that may result in bodily harm and even influence worker psychological well being.
Ryan Weaver, VP of Industrial at Robotiq, explains:
“Palletizing is among the most labor-intensive duties within the manufacturing and transport course of. The excessive threat of harm from repeatedly selecting and stacking heavy packing containers makes it a threat for the corporate. Moreover, the uninteresting and repetitive nature of the duty means it is arduous to search out and retain staff prepared to do the job.”
If you’re utilizing automated palletizing, there are a lot of further advantages. The correct conveyor might help 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 frequent pallet issues like loading inefficiency, misalignment, product injury, and inconsistent pallet high quality.
Whether or not you’re utilizing handbook 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 splendid pallet conveyor requires a transparent understanding of your operational wants, future targets, and constraints that have an effect on the deployment.
Listed here are 10 steps that can assist you make clear which pallet conveyor will meet each your present and future imaginative and prescient to your finish of line:
Step 1: Determine on Automated or Handbook Palletizing
First, you should resolve if you’ll use a handbook 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.
Handbook palletizing is a viable choice for small-scale operations with rare packaging calls for or price range constraints. On this case, you’ll search for conveyors that improve handbook palletizing.
Automated palletizing gives important benefits, together with higher packing consistency, enhanced office security, and room for scalable development. Robotic palletizing has turn out to be a robust strategic transfer for a lot of corporations 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 handbook course of. It is a key step within the Lean Robotics Framework that we all the time recommend earlier than individuals add new know-how.
Robotiq’s Utility Skilled Marc-Antoine Lacasse explains the significance of this step in our free palletizing eLearning course:
“Handbook activity mapping is step one to actually perceive the appliance effectively. 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 complete course of and observe which duties have been value-added and which have been downtimes.”
To assist with this, obtain our free handbook activity map template.
Step 3: Determine on Centralized or Decentralized Palletizing
You need to then take a step again and take a look at how your palletizing cell matches within the general stream of your whole facility. Particularly, resolve in case you are utilizing centralized or decentralized palletizing.
Centralized palletizing entails gathering all product traces right into a single location. This may be an environment friendly strategy for high-volumes and may decrease the ground area required to your palletizing cell. Nonetheless, it’d require a extra advanced community of conveyors if in case you have quite a lot of product traces.
Decentralized palletizing deploys smaller, unbiased palletizing stations for processing single or small numbers of product traces. This may permit for higher flexibility however might require a bigger funding upfront.
Step 4: Outline the Conveyor’s Position
To decide on the suitable pallet conveyor, begin by defining its particular goal. This ought to be pretty easy after going by the earlier steps.
Ask questions like:
- Will the conveyor transport free 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 kind has distinctive traits that may have an effect on your alternative of conveyor. For instance, pallets with shaped toes can improve the soundness and longevity of storage, and are effectively suited to drag prepare 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 objects that the conveyor will transport?
- Atmosphere — Is the surroundings soiled or contain excessive or low temperatures?
- Loading and unloading procedures — How will objects be loaded onto the conveyor and unloaded at their vacation spot?**
- Conveyor pace — How shortly do objects want to maneuver to maintain the proper cadence inside your product workflow?
- Object properties — What properties of the merchandise themselves would possibly have an effect on conveyor alternative? For instance, are objects delicate, heavy, or require particular remedy.
The choices you make now will assist you slim down the choices.
Step 6: Decide the Appropriate Sort of Conveyor
Now, it is time to have a look at the several types of conveyor and evaluate them towards the wants of your utility.
A few of the many conveyor varieties embrace:
- Chain pushed conveyors — These are pushed by chains and are perfect for robust, 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 effectively in high-temperature environments.
- Plastic belt powered conveyors — These are perfect for masses 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 — Much like chain conveyors, these use a plastic belt as a substitute of a series. This makes them quieter and appropriate for mild masses.
- Slat conveyors — Comprising a chain-driven loop of slats, these present a inflexible, flat floor. They’re usually used within the automotive business.
Step 7: Take into account the Palletizing Cell Structure
Your palletizing cell structure can have an incredible influence on efficiency. By minimizing pointless actions, you possibly can optimize your cycle time and enhance effectivity, particularly with robotic palletizing.
Numerous structure 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 structure 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 are able to 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 to your new conveyor system is crucial for making knowledgeable selections. By analyzing the long-term influence, it helps you justify the preliminary price and likewise demonstrates the financial savings you can also make.
Robotic palletizing usually means that you can get a sooner payback interval than merely buying a conveyor for handbook palletizing.
Our ROI calculator means that you can 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 want to scale your palletizing operations sooner or later. Progress usually brings elevated throughput and new necessities to your finish of line processes.
Versatile options, equivalent to these constructed with modular parts, can help you simply combine further parts to your palletizing cell to deal with such modifications. This flexibility is why so many corporations are turning to collaborative robotic palletizing. The inherent flexibility of such robotic options makes it straightforward 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 suitable automation resolution.
Investing in palletizing automation does not should be a troublesome resolution. With the suitable steerage and a transparent understanding of the chances, you possibly can guarantee seamless integration that addresses each your speedy wants and future scalability.
Learn our The Automated Palletizing Purchaser’s Information to get a easy, action-oriented information by this course of.
Must automate palletizing as effectively?
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 at the moment’s altering markets.
Contact us at the moment to debate your palletizing concepts and learn the way we will take your materials dealing with course of to the subsequent stage!
What kind of conveyors have you ever tried? Inform us within the feedback beneath or be part of the dialogue on LinkedIn or Fb.