Pallet conveyors are a elementary part in materials dealing with and finish of line operations. Selecting the best conveyor can have a direct affect on transport instances, facility structure, and general productiveness.
The appropriate pallet conveyor can cut back wasteful guide labor steps, optimize your house, and even open the doorways to automated palletizing options. Nevertheless, the fallacious selection might result in larger 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 on your palletizing.
Laying the Groundwork for an Improved Palletizing Course of
Deciding on the precise conveyor is greater than only a sensible buying determination. It may be a strategic transfer to boost your materials dealing with course of.
In case you are utilizing guide palletizing — the place employees stack pallets with merchandise — the precise conveyor might help to cut 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 likely one of the most labor-intensive duties within the manufacturing and transport course of. The excessive danger of harm from repeatedly selecting and stacking heavy bins makes it a danger for the corporate. Moreover, the boring and repetitive nature of the duty means it is onerous to search out and retain employees keen to do the job.”
In case you are utilizing automated palletizing, there are various further advantages. The appropriate conveyor might help to optimize your automated course of to create a seamless, environment friendly workflow. When mixed with robotic palletizing, the conveyor types a system that helps cut back frequent pallet issues like loading inefficiency, misalignment, product injury, and inconsistent pallet high quality.
Whether or not you’re utilizing guide 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 very best pallet conveyor requires a transparent understanding of your operational wants, future objectives, and constraints that have an effect on the deployment.
Listed below are 10 steps that will help you make clear which pallet conveyor will meet each your present and future imaginative and prescient on your finish of line:
Step 1: Resolve on Automated or Guide Palletizing
First, it’s essential to determine if you’ll use a guide 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.
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 guide palletizing.
Automated palletizing gives vital 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 firms 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 guide course of. This can be a key step within the Lean Robotics Framework that we all the time recommend earlier than folks add new know-how.
Robotiq’s Software Knowledgeable Marc-Antoine Lacasse explains the significance of this step in our free palletizing eLearning course:
“Guide job mapping is step one to essentially perceive the appliance nicely. Ask questions like: What’s 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 word which duties had been value-added and which had been downtimes.”
To assist with this, obtain our free guide job map template.
Step 3: Resolve on Centralized or Decentralized Palletizing
You need to then take a step again and take a look at how your palletizing cell suits within the general stream of your complete facility. Particularly, determine 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 method for high-volumes and may decrease the ground house required on your palletizing cell. Nevertheless, it would require a extra advanced community of conveyors when you’ve got loads of product traces.
Decentralized palletizing deploys smaller, impartial palletizing stations for processing single or small numbers of product traces. This may permit for larger 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 objective. This needs 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?
Every pallet kind has distinctive traits that may have an effect on your selection of conveyor. For instance, pallets with shaped ft can improve the soundness and longevity of storage, and are nicely 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 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?
- Surroundings — 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 rapidly 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 therapy.
The selections you make now will make it easier to slim down the choices.
Step 6: Decide the Appropriate Kind of Conveyor
Now, it is time to have a look at the several types of conveyor and examine them in opposition to the wants of your software.
Among the many conveyor sorts embody:
- Chain pushed conveyors — These are pushed by chains and are perfect for powerful, soiled environments and high-load pallets.
- Drag chain conveyors — As a substitute of pulling with a sequence, these pull the load. They’re 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 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 sequence. 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’re typically used within the automotive business.
Step 7: Contemplate the Palletizing Cell Structure
Your palletizing cell structure can have an incredible affect on efficiency. By minimizing pointless actions, you may 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 components, 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. Nevertheless, some small adjustments will have an effect on the efficiency of the cell rather a lot. 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 on your new conveyor system is crucial for making knowledgeable choices. By analyzing the long-term affect, it helps you justify the preliminary value and likewise 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 guide 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 typically brings elevated throughput and new necessities on your finish of line processes.
Versatile options, akin to these constructed with modular parts, will let you simply combine further components to your palletizing cell to deal with such adjustments. This flexibility is why so many firms are turning to collaborative robotic palletizing. The inherent flexibility of such robotic options makes it simple to scale and optimize palletizing lengthy into the longer term.
Step 10: Put money into 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 answer.
Investing in palletizing automation would not should be a tricky determination. With the precise steering and a transparent understanding of the probabilities, you may guarantee seamless integration that addresses each your rapid wants and future scalability.
Learn our The Automated Palletizing Purchaser’s Information to get a easy, action-oriented information by means of this course of.
Have 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.
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 in the present day’s altering markets.
Contact us in the present day to debate your palletizing concepts and learn how we are able to take your materials dealing with course of to the following degree!
What kind of conveyors have you ever tried? Inform us within the feedback under or be part of the dialogue on LinkedIn or Fb.
