Robotics in Distribution
Robots have long been accepted in manufacturing environments to weld car body panels together, cut and polish parts, etc. Using robots in the distribution of products is more of an emerging concept. Here the robots are used to: pick, pack, palletize, and ship products of various units of measure: pallets, cases, and individual pieces (eaches). Advances in vision systems, end of arm tooling, robot mobility, and decreasing cost points are enabling robots to be used more and more in the distribution environment.
With nearly a 60 year history, Bastian Robotics has an expert’s perspective on the advantages of robots in distribution.
- Mixed Pallet Building
- Robotic “Each” Picking
- High Speed Picking
- High Speed Pick and Place
- Robotics Articles
Robotic Mixed Pallet Building
Building mixed pallets manually is a tough job that leads to high employee turnover, high worker compensation claims, and often order inaccuracy. In the above application 2 gantry robots are attached to the carriage of an automated storage and retrieval system (AS/RS). Each gantry robot has access to 8 pick pallets in standard racking on both sides of the aisle. The gantry robots use vision assisted vacuum end of arm tools to pick up one or two cases. In the carriage of the AS/RS are 4 build pallet positions each with a dedicated stretch wrapper. As the pallets are built the stretch wrapper follows the pallet layers up to maintain a stable pallet. The AS/RS typically visits 6 to 8 positions in the rack where 16 pick pallets are available. Total cycle time to build 4 pallets containing 55 cases each is approximately 16 minutes. A single aisle system builds approximately 600 cases per hour. The beauty of this type of mixed pallet building system is that cases are taken directly from a pick pallet and are placed on to a build pallet. This allows a tight system footprint and a very competitively priced system.
Robotic “Each” Picking
Each picking from standard carton flow lanes is labor intensive. Pick to Voice and Pick to Light systems certainly enhance productivity, but are still subject to pick errors and variable rates by the picker. In this design gantry robots serve 4 bays of automated carton flow to pick “eaches” and place them into indexing order cartons or totes. The robots use hand-like vision assisted end effectors with both gripping and vacuum capability to select one or more products. A trash conveyor is positioned above the order filling conveyor for emptied cartons. By mirroring the automated carton flow on both sides of the indexing order conveyor, pick rates can exceed 600 lines per hour per robot. This is approximately twice the productivity of a human operator. Robots can work 3 shifts without breaks to maximize the return on investment.
High Speed Full Layer Picking
For the beverage and grocery industry, building mixed pallets of high velocity full layers is a common activity in the distribution center. Often this is done by full layer picking accessories on a fork truck or expensive x-y overhead gantry systems. By using a robot on a two pallet position shuttle full layer mixed pallets can be built quickly and cost effectively. In this system empty pallets are dispensed and placed on one of two pallet build positions on the shuttle. The robot shuttle then moves to along the track and selects full layers of the required product. The robot envelope is large enough to select layers from up to 6 pallets at a time without repositioning. When the full layer pallets are built they are discharged out of the center of the system for fork truck pick-up. The “pick from” pallets are brought in by fork trucks and deposited at the directed location. Light curtains are used to inhibit robotic access to the “pick from” pallet while it is being deposited or removed.
High Speed Pick and Place
High speed pick and place robots can pack products in the range of 90 to 120 pieces per minute per robot. Fixed vision systems identify the product coming down a conveyor belt and then quickly orient the robot end of arm tool to grip or vacuum-pick the product and place or pack it in to a finished goods container. This technology can be used for food products or any type of high volume products that have to be packed out quickly.
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