Related Case Studies
Industry: Retail
Technology: Accumulation Conveyor, Sortation
Passion Growers
SITUATION
Passion Growers have used a refrigerated warehouse space in a warehouse adjacent to their existing operations for overflow handling during their peak season. This overflow handling was accomplished without automation and required pallets of product to be constantly moved back and forth between warehouses. An inefficient and time consuming process.
ASSESSMENT
TriFactor performed a design study to determine the best use the adjacent warehouse space available with the goals of increasing efficiency, throughput and accuracy of receiving full pallets of cases of flowers, unloading, sorting and then palletizing for store shipments Since cut flowers inherently do not have a long shelf life before they lose their natural beauty, a fast and accurate automated system would reduce flower time in the warehouse and lengthen the time that their customers get to enjoy the beautiful flowers.
SOLUTION
TriFactor designed and installed a sliding shoe sortation system with nine divert lanes and a recirculation loop to improve the speed of receiving pallets, unloading cases and sorting them to the various divert lanes for mixed-case pallet building. At the sortation induction is an omni-directional camera scan tunnel that captures bar codes on each box and communicates with Passion Grower’s host system, for appropriate lane assignment. This new system removes the inefficient manual handling for breaking down full pallets and sorting them to various mixed-case pallets for store order fulfillment.
TriFactor Provided:
- Design Engineering
- Material Handling Equipment
- Mechanical & Electrical Installation
- PLC Controls Programming
- Camera Scanning and Communications
- Host Interface & Communications
Products Utilized:
- Zero Pressure Photo-Eye Accumulation Conveyor
- Gapping and Camera Scanning
- High Speed Sliding Shoe Sorter
- Gravity Roller Conveyor Pallet Building Lanes
