Take a look at how a major Apparel Wholesaler utilizes material handling systems to improve its distribution process by reducing labor costs and improving productivity.
This major designer, manufacturer, marketer and distributer of sportswear, primarily men's and women's casual pants and shorts, sought out warehouse consultants and material handling systems to help improve their warehouse productivity. Their products are marketed under various brands such as Duck Head, Bill Blass, John Henry, Van Heusen, Royal Palm, Banana Joe, etc.
Some of their major customers include Wal-Mart, Philips-Van Heusen, Sam's Club, Kohl's and J.C.Penney.
To support their continued and projected growth, this wholesaler and distributor of clothing (Company X) partnered with a material handling systems integrator to help maximize efficiency and throughput at their Tampa, Florida distribution center. Company X contracted with a major system integrator to design, engineer, and manufacture and integrate two RSU Sortation systems along with their state of the art, Warehouse Control Systems (WCS). In addition to these two key components, they integrated packing stations, take-away conveyor systems, carton merges and a carton-sortation systems, conveyor to complete this turnkey material handling system.
The sortation systems Company X decided to go with, was the RSU – Tilted Tray Sorter. The RSU was developed the in 1996 for sorting individual units. The RSU-Tilted Tray Sorter consists of tilted carrying trays traveling on an enclosed track conveyor. Items are inducted onto the trays either manually or automatically and are transported along the track to their destination. To improve productivity, the trays are presented to the operators in a horizontal position at the induction areas and are later tilted for sorting.What makes the RSU perfect for this application is its ability to travel different paths and elevations. Most unit sorters are constrained to some type of racetrack configuration, limiting its flexibility. Not the R.S.U. Company “X” had limited precious space to allow for unit sorting, which made the R.S.U. the perfect application.
There are two RSU’s servicing a total of 500 customer chutes/discharge locations for each wave. The discrete induction scheme creates four “virtual” sorters with a daily capacity of 150,000 units per day.
Once the orders are downloaded for a wave, the cartons to be pack are placed at each of the discharge destinations by packers who use handheld PDA’s to scan both the carton barcode label and the lane number. This operation links each carton to its lane. When all destinations have cartons located under them, operation is ready to commence.
Product is delivered to the induct stations on pallets. The cartons or open product are set up for the inductors on tables adjacent to the tray path. Empty trash cartons are tossed into an overhead trash system at the induction areas. The empty cartons travel overhead to the existing compactor outside the building.
Individual pants are placed onto the level trays as the trays move by the inductor. Once on the sorter, an overhead scanner scan’s the moving items and then the Warehouse Control System identifies the product and assigns a discharge destination. The trays are then tilted to an angle suitable for discharge. Each tray is tracked on the RSU sorter…
When the tray reaches the proper destination, the tray door is opened. Gravity allows the product to gently slide from the tilted tray into a pack out station. Pack-out tables are located underneath the destination chutes. Here, the packers place the items into the shipping carton, place a label on the carton and push the carton onto the take-away conveyor. Flat empty cartons are stored along the machines in empty carton racks, making it an ergonomically efficient way to create the next pack-out carton.
The completed cartons from each unit sorter are transported via the takeaway conveyor. Depending on the requirements, the cartons will either be delivered to one of two areas:
Product being routed to the sorter conveys to a 2-to-1 controlled merge, which merges the cartons into a single stream. The cartons are then properly gapped and carton labels are scanned for sorting.
W&H Systems; One of America’s most experienced integrators of automated material handling systems, specializes in optimizing the flow of merchandise through warehouses while minimizing labor and maximizing space utilization. By offering the “Total Solution”(needs assessment, design, software, equipment, implementation, commissioning and support) W&H can act as a single source contractor for you material handling needs.
24th January 2012
Short URL: http://prst.co/2qx
Bookmark and share:
©2012 Pressitt a collaboration between Liberate Media and Best Served Cold - Find out why this site does not support IE6
Material Handling Systems
Facebook group
Twitter feed
Flickr