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 transport occasions, facility format, and total productiveness.
The fitting pallet conveyor can cut back wasteful handbook labor steps, optimize your area, and even open the doorways to automated palletizing options. Nevertheless, the fallacious selection might result in greater prices, wasteful inefficiencies, and stock bottlenecks .
That will help you keep away from these pitfalls, this information walks you thru the ten important steps for selecting the correct conveyor in your palletizing.
Laying the Groundwork for an Improved Palletizing Course of
Deciding on the precise conveyor is greater than only a sensible buying resolution. It may be a strategic transfer to reinforce your materials dealing with course of.
In case you are utilizing handbook palletizing — the place employees stack pallets with merchandise — the precise conveyor may also help to scale back harmful ergonomic points that may result in bodily harm and even affect 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 danger of harm from repeatedly selecting and stacking heavy packing containers makes it a danger for the corporate. Moreover, the uninteresting and repetitive nature of the duty means it is arduous to search out and retain employees prepared to do the job.”
In case you are utilizing automated palletizing, there are a lot of additional advantages. The fitting conveyor may also help to optimize your automated course of to create a seamless, environment friendly workflow. When mixed with robotic palletizing, the conveyor kinds a system that helps cut back frequent pallet issues like loading inefficiency, misalignment, product harm, 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 ideally suited 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 in your finish of line:
Step 1: Determine on Automated or Guide Palletizing
First, you could resolve if you’ll use a handbook palletizing course of or an automatic one. This will 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 price range constraints. On this case, you’ll search for conveyors that improve handbook palletizing.
Automated palletizing affords vital benefits, together with higher packing consistency, enhanced office security, and room for scalable development. Robotic palletizing has grow to be a robust strategic transfer for a lot of firms within the final 5 years.
Step 2: Map Your Present 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 folks add new know-how.
Robotiq’s Utility Knowledgeable 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 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 whole course of and be aware which duties had been value-added and which had been downtimes.”
To assist with this, obtain our free handbook job map template.
Step 3: Determine on Centralized or Decentralized Palletizing
You must then take a step again and take a look at how your palletizing cell matches within the total circulate of your total facility. Particularly, resolve if you’re 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 might decrease the ground area required in your palletizing cell. Nevertheless, it would require a extra advanced community of conveyors in case you have numerous product traces.
Decentralized palletizing deploys smaller, unbiased palletizing stations for processing single or small numbers of product traces. This will permit for better flexibility however might require a bigger funding upfront.
Step 4: Outline the Conveyor’s Position
To decide on the precise pallet conveyor, begin by defining its particular goal. This must be pretty easy after going by way of 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 may 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 shaped ft can improve the steadiness and longevity of storage, and are effectively suited to drag practice conveyors.
Step 5: Make clear the Operational Properties of Your Conveyor
There’s a staggering variety of conveyor sorts. Earlier than even trying on the particular person sorts, 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 atmosphere 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 velocity — How rapidly do gadgets want to maneuver to maintain the proper cadence inside your product workflow?
- Object properties — What properties of the merchandise themselves may have an effect on conveyor selection? For instance, are gadgets delicate, heavy, or require particular therapy.
The choices you make now will provide help to slim down the choices.
Step 6: Choose the Appropriate Kind 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 number of the many conveyor sorts embody:
- Chain pushed conveyors — These are pushed by chains and are perfect for robust, soiled environments and high-load pallets.
- Drag chain conveyors — As an alternative 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 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 usually used within the automotive trade.
Step 7: Think about the Palletizing Cell Structure
Your palletizing cell format can have an incredible affect on efficiency. By minimizing pointless actions, you may optimize your cycle time and enhance effectivity, particularly with robotic palletizing.
Varied format components can have an effect on the cycle time, together with distances between components, the peak of the conveyor, and dimensions of the pallets.
Robotiq Purposes Engineer Gabriel Boucher explains:
“The format of a palletizing cell is usually pretty easy. Nevertheless, some small modifications will have an effect on the efficiency of the cell quite a bit. We will enhance the cycle time by merely shifting round some components.”
Step 8: Calculate the Return on Funding (ROI)
Understanding the return on funding (ROI) and payback interval in your new conveyor system is important for making knowledgeable choices. By analyzing the long-term affect, it helps you justify the preliminary price and likewise demonstrates the financial savings you may make.
Robotic palletizing usually permits you to get a sooner payback interval than merely buying a conveyor for handbook palletizing.
Our ROI calculator permits you to get a transparent understanding of prices, financial savings, and timeframes so you may work out how rapidly 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 in your finish of line processes.
Versatile options, akin to these constructed with modular elements, help you simply combine additional components 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 straightforward to scale and optimize palletizing lengthy into the long run.
Step 10: Spend money on the Proper Automation Options
In case you are contemplating automating your palletizing in addition to including a brand new conveyor, you will need to select the precise automation resolution.
Investing in palletizing automation would not should be a tricky resolution. With the precise steerage and a transparent understanding of the chances, you may 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 way of this course of.
Must automate palletizing as effectively?
At Robotiq, we assist producers with automated palletizing options that mix the velocity, 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 as we speak’s altering markets.
Contact us as we speak to debate your palletizing concepts and learn the way we are able to take your materials dealing with course of to the subsequent 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.
