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System Integration
- Accurate professional advice, Design Support, Recommendation for Local Equipment Suppliers, Distributors and Consulting. Equipment and process design, Data Analysis, WMS, Mid-Level Software, Specifications, Bid Process, Automation, Relocation, Operational Analysis, Expansion.
- Every Company has a unique application with many possible solutions. Be careful with equipment manufacturers they are trying to sell as much of their product as they can to provide you with a solution. A sanity check is always advisable.
- Having a second company look at your solution as a short value engineering study is inexpensive and typically very cost effective. A good company should not get offended by another company having a second look.
- Design consideration should always keep in mind what your order profiles look like.
- Conveyor systems sized for shipping. Work from the shipping dock to determine rates necessary to meet maximum demand. Through put rate will determine conveyor types, speeds, necessary accumulation, buffering, and types of sortation. Document maximum, minimum and average size product.
- Sortation Systems such as sliding shoe can sort 100 cases per minute depending on case size. Pop-up wheel sorters slightly less, and down in rate with flat face diverters to 30cpm. Right angle transfers, pop-up transfers, pushers, may state in some literature up to 30cpm but right angle transfers really handle about 15cpm maximum. With the cost off sliding shoe sorters dropping, and the noise reduction from improved design, I would recommend sliding shoe sorters for most multiple divert applications large and small.
- Carousels, Manual and Automated. Manual carousels are excellent applications for multiple items per location. The key is to have efficient replenishment operations through software. Equipment suppliers can provide with a PC that will communicate with a WMS. Automated carousels are useful for case buffering systems for completing orders.
- Palletizing product from receiving using an automated device works excellent if you can assemble tier quantities of the same dimension. Their are several suppliers of this type of equipment. In addition manually palletizing and transporting to storage using fork trucks or AGV's is a common design. Automating the building of pallets is typically only for storage. Automating for shipping requires the same size product, or the same size product per tier. In a tier configuration volume will determine the usefulness.
- AS/RS's are very useful and cost effective when storing large quantities of same SKU per pallet, or high dollar SKU's. This requires a limited number of SKU's to meet the required cycle time.
- AGV's. Excellent for constant replenishment of forward pick locations.
- Overhead Conveyor. Define your where package first. Know all sizes and quantities that must be transported and grouped together.
- Ergonomics
- Multiple Strand Chain. Used in a verity of applications to transport
- Gantry Pick-and-Place devices and Robotics
- Table Top Conveyor. Mostly used for manual or precision location for assembly or machining. This is one instance where a basic simulation can help in defining cell operations.
- RF devices
- Operational Analysis, Business-to-Business (B2B), Business-to-Consumer (B2C), How do you see your distribution? What equipment is required at start up, use scalable approach to limit initial capital investment Flow of materials in/out and
- Most companies are looking for a two to three year return on investment. This usually can be improved upon.
- All solutions are scalable, including existing installations that can be modified to cope with growing business.
- I always encourage a visit to discuss operations and future plans in detail. Without a site visit it is impossible to correctly outline a process to reach specific goals.
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