Juice producer automates deep-freeze storage
The juice company, a division of Gregory Packaging, decided to meet a growing number of challenges associated with large-scale deep-freeze warehousing (fulfillment errors, high rate of returns, equipment and product damage, etc.) by putting the ASRS in place.
Suncup Juice president Ned Gregory told FoodProductionDaily.com that the ASRS made sense in boosting the operation’s efficiency.
“Automation, such as ASRS, in high-bay deep freeze warehouses reduces the cost of operation and gives an economic advantage in the marketplace,” he said. “By bringing the frozen product to the worker, it significantly reduces travel time by workers, wrong picks and product and facility damage, which is prevalent in contemporary deep-freeze warehouses utilizing forklift trucks.”
System solutions
A crucial part of the ASRS is a stacker crane from LTW Intralogistics. The machine is said to permit full-pallet load and layered-pallet inventory to be moved quickly, safely and precisely.
Forklift trucks transport product in one direction, then return to place with no load. By contrast, the stacker cranes place the load into a rack, then retrieve a load from storage on the way back out, which optimizes movement.
Other benefits
In addition to moving efficiently, stacker cranes are said to facilitate higher rack heights, which maximizes limited floor space. Additionally, the equipment reportedly works well in extremely cold environments, offer tight turning radius, have easily integrated controls architecture, and are energy efficient.
Another reputed benefit of the ASRS system is precise load tracking. It can monitor batch numbers, production dates and weight as unit loads and cases are moved about. Pallet labels facilitate product tracking, and temperature data loggers and RFID tags can help track the temperature history of incoming and outgoing product.
