Years ago when I worked as production supervisor for a major pharmaceutical company I had the envious job of assigning workers to do some manual tasks that were not very pleasant. One of these tasks was the stacking of product cartons on pallets for shipping to retail stores. This was a mindless job, you could disengage your brain to do it. All that was required was fairly strong hands and arms, and a strong back. It was usually the back that went first, whether the worker was stacking cartons on the pallet or unloading cartons from the pallet, the job involved bending over multiple times per hour to accomplish the desired result. This job was rotated from one worker to another based on the union rules in the department because it was so bad for the back.
Thankfully those days are gone, at least in most manufacturing operations. Now we let automation do those painful tasks so the workers do not have to go to the doctor for back injuries. There ought to be a law that states that if a manufacturing operation is going to automate that the first operation that is automated is pallet loading and unloading. Obviously one of the biggest benefits for automated pallet 
loading and unloading is the fact that a company keeps its workers from injury. Other benefits of automated palletizing, as this automated procedure is sometimes called, include an increase in speed of production and efficiency. Automated palletizing can be configured to do this onerous, but necessary, work in many different ways. The most straightforward way is to have one robotic device that loads or unloads one pallet of product cartons, one at a time. From this configuration there can be devised many variations in this loading and unloading process. All of these variations incorporate automation that saves backs and make production more efficient.
There can be single pallet, double pallet, or multiple pallet configurations. Demands of the marketplace and requirements of the manufacturer can dictate what the configuration and speed of automated loading or unloading of pallets is to be. One of the great attributes of automating this process is the fact that the loading and unloading configuration can be changed quite easily. A few changes in the programming of the robotic can change the process from a single pallet to a multiple pallet operation. There can be a lot of variation in the process to meet the needs of the production process. This makes it very easy to use the automated palletizing in a multiple of production jobs with varying speeds and varying production setups. Just like quite a lot of other industrial products, the cost of automation has been coming down as technology has improved and the demand for technology products has increased. It is much less expensive now to implement an automated solution for palletizing products. The benefit of reducing cost and increasing production output will bring the return on investment that is required when implementing palletizing automation robotics.
There is some variation in the types of palletizing solutions that are available to do this job of stacking and unstacking. The layer palletizing solution puts all of the products that are to be placed on a single layer of a pallet together. An entire layer of product cartons are deposited on the pallet at a time. There is only one pattern of cartons that can be deposited by this process on to the pallet. There is additional floor space required by the stacking process to accumulate all the products to be places on one layer of the pallet. Because of the demand by retail operations that are to receive products that are stacked on these pallets, this conventional method of palletizing is not acceptable. Retailers are now demanding that each pallet has some mixture of products in each layer of the pallet. Historically pallets have been loaded with one product and shipped to the retailer’s warehouse. In this warehouse the products have to be removed and re-stacked on pallets that have many products mixed on each pallet, for shipment to retail stores. To meet the demand of the retail operations and eliminate the need to re-stack products onto new pallets for shipment to stores, manufacturers are using automated palletizing to stack the “mixed product” pallets before shipping them to retailing warehouses. The programming of automated palletizing can handle the multiple product mix that is required by the retailers. The supply of several different product cartons just needs to be made available to the robotic work station, so that automation can load the mixed pallet in the order that has been programmed.
As the cost of robotics has come down over time, the cost of automated palletizing is comparable to initial installation of the limited layer palletizing solution. Even the area that the robotics occupy is similar to or less than the layer palletizing solution. Further limitations of layer palletizing are striking. Conversion times between production jobs can be extensive due to the fact that this conventional method of palletizing does not adapt well to different product production scenarios. This fact causes an increase in the amount of production floor space that is required for different production lines. Sometimes it is not possible to change layer equipment to a different production job because of the specific design of the product handling tool. It is just not able to handle a different product.
It is apparent that it is much more judicious to seriously look at installing automated palletizing equipment when any manufacturing company is building new production facilities. Even more it would behoove a manufacturer with existing production facilities to evaluate the prospect of replacing existing layer palletizing equipment with automated palletizing equipment.
Our consulting engineers can answer any questions that you might have about the automation of your palletizing operation or they can supply you with a no-obligation quote for automation. If you have questions about automation or you would like to request a quote for automation, please click the “Request a Quote” button below and fill out the form to submit your question or request.
