Automated pallet software promises to cut supplier costs
consignments can best be arranged on pallets has been developed for
the food industry.
This solution should help warehouse personnel who face a difficult challenge when required to pack different products on a pallet without wasting space. This problem is often compounded by the fact that they have to stack packages of widely varying shapes and sizes in a stable arrangement, while making optimum use of the space on the pallet and ensuring that none of the products is damaged during transport.
Indeed, suppliers and manufacturers faced with high raw material and transport costs are now under intense pressure to maximise supply chain efficiencies.
In response to this, scientists at the Fraunhofer Institute for Material Flow and Logistics IML have developed the UNIT Order Packing module (Utilities for Numerical Methods and Information Technology in Packaging and Transport Logistics) for the food trade. The software supplies the data for a fully automated order picking system operated by the Witron company in Parkstein, south-east of Bayreuth, which loads pallets in a goods distribution centre to meet specific orders.
"Most pallets are still packed by hand at the moment," said Hua Li of the packaging and trade logistics department at IML. "Our task was to teach a software program to think like an experienced warehouse operator."
As soon as an order is received, the software is given all necessary information such as the dimensions, shape, weight and load capacity of the items to be packed. The programme also takes the goods group into account. The software dictates that those of the same group should be packed together on the pallet as far as possible, since that saves the retailer journeys later on when transferring goods to the shop shelves.
"The various constraints - for instance, goods that can bear a load go on the bottom, less robust goods go on top, goods of the same category go together, and then stacking them all to a height of at least two metres - are bound to create conflicts," said Dr. Li.
"We therefore had to work out evaluation criteria and priorities for the software so that it could find the optimum solution."
It now calculates the best packing arrangement, right down to the last millimetre. Sensors check whether there is really enough room in the space envisaged.
The position and orientation of the items to be packed are communicated to the automatic picking system. This in turn requests the items from the automatic warehousing system, and a robot arm stacks them on the pallet. One retail chain in the United States is already using the system, and a German company is currently setting it up in its new goods distribution centre.
The Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft undertakes applied research and its services are solicited by customers and contractual partners in industry, the service sector and public administration. The Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft maintains roughly 80 research units, including 58 Fraunhofer Institutes, at over 40 different locations throughout Germany.
A staff of some 12,500, predominantly qualified scientists and engineers, work with an annual research budget of over €1 billion. Of this sum, more than € 900 million is generated through contract research.
