Industrial Conveying (Aust) offers Flexible SKU System for Automated Order Assembly

24 Mar 2011

Industrial Conveying (Aust) has designed a flexible automated SKU (stock keeping unit) order collating and palletising system for order assembly and product dispatch.

The SKU order collating and palletising system can be directly linked to production or utilised in distribution warehouses for order assembly and dispatch of products, a task that is typically carried out manually.

The flexible SKU system can be individually tailored for any company with a limited number, or hundreds of SKUs.

The system is suitable for application in a wide range of industries including third party warehousing, food manufacturing, retail distribution, pharmaceuticals, packaged meat and poultry supply and virtually any packaged goods industry requiring distribution.

The system integrates any combination of Industrial Conveying’s technologies including robots, gantries, layer picking, layer transfer and disassembly, cassette loading, sortation and palletising.

Sub systems normally include case and pallet conveyor system, bar code and/or RFID scanning as well as ASRS warehouse in some instances.

The SKU solution suits applications where there is handling of any number of SKUs from which orders are assembled.

The SKU system is focused on the needs of businesses that process orders in one of three ways: those that palletise in layers, those that do rainbow pallets and those that column or random stack.

These are among the most demanding and most common order assembly methods in Australia.

Since every business is different, order assembly methods will depend on volumes, customer demand, number of SKUs, order collation and dispatch profiles plus other variables.

Industrial Conveying’s system therefore involves mixing and matching certain technologies to provide the optimum cost-effective solution.

Layer picking involves robotised pick-up of entire layers of product to be assembled on pallets for entire orders.

This volume-driven solution is ideal for companies that predominantly sell on layers, such as those supplying soft drinks, chips or washing powder.

This system is ideal for picking and distributing product during times of retail specials, and every solution will be tailored to suit the end user.

Likewise, rainbow pallets where pallets slot in between layers of product are suited to end users such as convenience store chains that would make a large order across a lot of stores but need to facilitate limited storage at each store.

A gantry system with either single or column stack capability may be utilised for complicated order picks, where one pallet comprises multiple products made up of less than a complete layer of any one product.

Industrial Conveying’s solution eliminates the need for personnel to assemble orders manually using paper-driven systems.

Industrial Conveying offers a fully automated SKU order collating and palletising system to eliminate manual order consolidation.

In addition to improved logistics and handling, the system also enhances workplace occupational health and safety.

Source: Industrial Conveying (Aust)