Pallet conveyors are a basic part in materials dealing with and finish of line operations. Choosing the appropriate conveyor can have a direct influence on transport occasions, facility format, and total productiveness.
The proper pallet conveyor can scale back wasteful handbook labor steps, optimize your house, and even open the doorways to automated palletizing options. However, the mistaken selection may result in greater prices, wasteful inefficiencies, and stock bottlenecks .
To enable you to keep away from these pitfalls, this information walks you thru the ten important steps for choosing the right conveyor in your palletizing.
Laying the Groundwork for an Improved Palletizing Process
Selecting the appropriate conveyor is greater than only a sensible buying choice. It is usually 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 appropriate conveyor will help to scale back harmful ergonomic points that may result in bodily harm and even influence worker psychological well being.
Ryan Weaver, VP of Commercial 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 containers makes it a danger for the corporate. Additionally, the boring and repetitive nature of the duty means it is exhausting to search out and retain staff keen to do the job.”
If you’re utilizing automated palletizing, there are a lot of further advantages. The proper conveyor will 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 widespread pallet issues like loading inefficiency, misalignment, product injury, and inconsistent pallet high quality.
Whether you’re utilizing handbook or automated palletizing, the conveyor lays the groundwork for an environment friendly and scalable palletizing course of.
10 Steps to Choose the Right Pallet Conveyor
Choosing your very best pallet conveyor requires a transparent understanding of your operational wants, future objectives, and constraints that have an effect on the deployment.
Here are 10 steps that will help you make clear which pallet conveyor will meet each your present and future imaginative and prescient in your finish of line:
Step 1: Decide on Automated or Manual Palletizing
First, it’s essential to resolve if you’ll use a handbook palletizing course of or an automatic one. This can radically have an effect on the selection of conveyor. If you have not thought-about automating your palletizing course of earlier than, now is an effective time to consider it.
Manual palletizing is a viable choice for small-scale operations with rare packaging calls for or finances constraints. In this case, you’ll search for conveyors that improve handbook palletizing.
Automated palletizing presents important benefits, together with higher packing consistency, enhanced office security, and room for scalable progress. Robotic palletizing has turn into a powerful strategic transfer for a lot of corporations within the final 5 years.
Step 2: Map Your Existing Process First
Before deciding on a conveyor, take time to map out your present handbook course of. This is a key step within the Lean Robotics Framework that we all the time recommend earlier than folks add new know-how.
Robotiq’s Application Expert Marc-Antoine Lacasse explains the significance of this step in our free palletizing eLearning course:
“Manual activity mapping is step one to actually perceive the appliance nicely. Ask questions like: What is the subsequent step within the manufacturing line? How does the pallet go away 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 activity map template.
Step 3: Decide on Centralized or Decentralized Palletizing
You ought to then take a step again and have a look at how your palletizing cell suits within the total circulate of your total facility. Specifically, resolve in case you are utilizing centralized or decentralized palletizing.
Centralized palletizing entails gathering all product strains right into a single location. This could be an environment friendly method for high-volumes and may reduce the ground house required in your palletizing cell. However, it would require a extra complicated community of conveyors when you have plenty of product strains.
Decentralized palletizing deploys smaller, unbiased palletizing stations for processing single or small numbers of product strains. This can permit for better flexibility however might require a bigger funding upfront.
Step 4: Define the Conveyor’s Role
To select the appropriate pallet conveyor, begin by defining its particular function. This ought to be pretty easy after going by means 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 may affect the kind of conveyor?
Each pallet kind has distinctive traits that may have an effect on your selection of conveyor. For instance, pallets with fashioned toes can improve the steadiness and longevity of storage, and are nicely suited to drag practice conveyors.
Step 5: Clarify the Operational Properties of Your Conveyor
There is a staggering variety of conveyor sorts. Before even wanting 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 objects that the conveyor will transport?
- Environment — Is the atmosphere 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 may have an effect on conveyor selection? For instance, are objects delicate, heavy, or require particular remedy.
The selections you make now will enable you to slim down the choices.
Step 6: Pick the Suitable Type of Conveyor
Now, it is time to have a look at the several types of conveyor and evaluate them towards the wants of your software.
Some of the various 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 — Instead of pulling with a series, these pull the load. They are comparatively compact and work nicely 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 could be easy and cost-effective.
- Poly-v energy curler conveyors — Similar to chain conveyors, these use a plastic belt as an alternative of a series. This makes them quieter and appropriate for gentle masses.
- Slat conveyors — Comprising a chain-driven loop of slats, these present a inflexible, flat floor. They are sometimes used within the automotive trade.
Step 7: Consider the Palletizing Cell Layout
Your palletizing cell format can have an amazing influence on efficiency. By minimizing pointless actions, you possibly can optimize your cycle time and enhance effectivity, particularly with robotic palletizing.
Various format elements can have an effect on the cycle time, together with distances between components, the peak of the conveyor, and dimensions of the pallets.
Robotiq Applications Engineer Gabriel Boucher explains:
“The format of a palletizing cell is usually pretty easy. However, some small adjustments will have an effect on the efficiency of the cell rather a lot. We can enhance the cycle time by merely shifting round some components.”
Step 8: Calculate the Return on Investment (ROI)
Understanding the return on funding (ROI) and payback interval in your new conveyor system is crucial for making knowledgeable selections. By analyzing the long-term influence, it helps you justify the preliminary value and in addition demonstrates the financial savings you can also make.
Robotic palletizing typically permits you to get a quicker 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 possibly can work out how shortly your funding will repay.
Step 9: Set Yourself Up for Future Scalability
Purchasing a pallet conveyor should not simply be a “fast repair.” When deciding on a conveyor, take into consideration the way you want to scale your palletizing operations sooner or later. Growth typically brings elevated throughput and new necessities in your finish of line processes.
Flexible options, resembling these constructed with modular elements, permit you to simply combine further components to your palletizing cell to deal with such adjustments. 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: Invest within the Right Automation Solutions
If you’re contemplating automating your palletizing in addition to including a brand new conveyor, it is very important select the appropriate automation answer.
Investing in palletizing automation does not should be a troublesome choice. With the appropriate steering and a transparent understanding of the probabilities, you possibly can guarantee seamless integration that addresses each your fast wants and future scalability.
Read our The Automated Palletizing Buyer’s Guide to get a easy, action-oriented information by means of this course of.
Need to 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.
Whatever your present palletizing wants, our vary of palletizing options not solely enhances productiveness but additionally builds adaptability into your operations, enabling you to remain aggressive in right this moment’s altering markets.
Contact us right this moment to debate your palletizing concepts and learn how we will take your materials dealing with course of to the subsequent stage!
What kind of conveyors have you ever tried? Tell us within the feedback beneath or be a part of the dialogue on LinkedIn or Facebook.