These pallets can also be made with specific features that fit well with the automated equipment. Jim Boos, operations manager at Wilmington Machinery, says jammed pallets can be avoided by opting for plastic, which can be constructed with more specific, consistent dimensions. “If the pallet isn’t engineered to that level of perfection, and if the equipment has been built to low tolerances, the pallets will start getting jammed.” Stop the jamming “Automated equipment is engineered for perfection-right down to the fraction of a centimeter,” Vaccaro explains. “This is a major oversight because without the pallet, none of the automation works.”įor example, a company that’s always used pallets made of a certain material may discover that it now needs pallets that are more compatible with their new machinery. “Companies get enthralled by the automation and the potential return on investment (ROI), but they don’t really pay attention to the pallet factor at all,” Vaccaro continues. “There’s a lot to consider when moving to a system that uses pallets with automation, but most companies either disregard this, ignore it or just don’t pay attention to it at all,” says John Vaccaro, president of Bettaway Supply Chain Services and founder of PalletTrader. The problem is that many companies don’t think about the marriage of pallets and automation until a problem arises. Damaged pallets, incompatible pallet sizes or those that aren’t uniform in size and shape can also create challenges when merged with automated equipment. If the pallets aren’t compatible with the equipment, for example, they may become damaged or jam up the machinery, which may lead to downtime and reduced throughput. Merging pallets and automationĪs more companies invest in warehouse automation and robotics, those advanced systems have to be able to work in harmony with pallets. Jammed pallets can be avoided by opting for plastic, which can be constructed with more specific, consistent dimensions. “For example, the in-use level for automated storage and retrieval systems (AS/RS) reached 44%, up from 32% last year, while those using conveyor and sortation climbed to 60% this year, up from 50% last year.” “Perhaps the biggest trend this year was that respondents reported higher in-use levels for many automation categories, as well as most conventional equipment categories,” Roberto Michel writes in Modern’s “Warehouse Automation Survey: Levels and total cost of ownership (TCO) concerns on the rise” report from the February issue. More recently, pallets are being used in conjunction with automated equipment, including automatic guided vehicles (AGVs) that move goods around the warehouse automated storage and retrieval systems (AS/RS) that store and retrieve goods in high-volume and/or high-density storage environments and automated conveyor and sortation solutions. In nearly all cases, that means investing in pallets made of strong materials that support the goods, reduce damage, improve warehouse safety and make it easier to move goods around.Īvailable in various sizes and made of different materials-namely wood, plastic, metal or corrugated paper-pallets are usually 48 x 48 inches, or 4 x 4 feet, in size and designed to be lifted and moved around by forklifts, pallet jacks and other types of materials handling equipment. Warehouse operators can invest in all the automated equipment in the world, but in the end, they’ll still need a sturdy base for storing and transporting goods across the supply chain.
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