Winter 2008/9

Forget your prejudices! Powered conveyors and automated handling systems can be appropriate for e-fulfilment warehouses, says Marcia MacLeod. In this invaluable introduction, she walks you through the various types of system on offer, while the suppliers explain how the latest products can help

Walk into a parcel carrier's sortation hub, and you can't fail to be impressed by the number of conveyors whizzing around the site, picking up parcels from one place and dropping them off in another. Then contrast that with an e-tailer's depot, in which multiple small orders are picked, often by hand. It seems like a different world.

In fact, automation has a role in a wide variety of e-tailer pick and pack operations – though as Simon Dennis, managing director at Flowstore Systems, readily admits: 'Smaller e-tailers and fulfilment companies may not be able to automate in the same way as a larger retailer would.'

He adds: 'A fulfilment company working for a variety of retailers, for example, handles different types of products with different picking arrangements – and a change of contract could bring a change of process.'

 

He cites a prime example to underline the point. 'One would think books would lend themselves to automation,' he suggests, 'but because they are easily damaged, they don't. Amazon, for example, is not automated.

'In addition, types and size of products change so fast that an e-tailer investing in one type of system might find it obsolete by the time their stock changes.'

However, Simon Dennis accepts that some degree of automation can be useful for some commodities, such as clothing. After all, he points out, fashion may change, but size and type of product does not. The knack is to find exactly the right degree of automation for your specific e-commerce operation.

'More often than not, our retail customers use low-tech equipment, or combine automation for some items with manual picking for others,' Dennis says.

B2B online retailer RS Components uses mini-load systems combined with hand picking. Abel and Cole, the organic produce supplier, uses Flowstore's carton live storage system, LS2, to ensure older stock is picked first.

'Carton live' systems comprise trolleys with cartons, totes, bins or other receptacles with a 'pick to (conveyor) belt' system, as Mike Alibone, business development director of SSI Schaefer, explains.

'A picker in one zone scans the location of an item and puts the goods in a tote, bin or whatever,' he says. 'The conveyor moves this to another zone for someone else to add to the order. When the order is complete, it is sent to the packing station, where the packer scans all the items to make sure the correct goods have been picked. A bigger version exists for pallets, but the aim of both is the same: to reduce walking time in the warehouse.'

Carton live systems are also economical in terms of space, says Flowstore, as high-density storage can lead to a 30 per cent reduction in required shelving. It is also three times faster than manual picking, and is safer, too, as it reduces operator fatigue and eliminates the potential for forklift collisions. In addition, these systems also offer increased efficiency through separate loading and picking faces and greater stock control.

Mini-loads sit at the end of the aisle and retrieve goods into a tote, carton or other receptacle in a horizontal or vertical piece of equipment. The system then drops the tote on to the conveyor, which speeds it along to the picker. When the picker picks the necessary items, it goes back to storage or is hived off to be replenished.

'Goods to man' systems provide a different – and more expensive – sort of automation. Products are stored in totes, cartons and so on in a large, automated high-density storage bank. The software (and most of the automated systems are computerised) instructs the storage bank to bring out a product via a conveyor, and move it to a workstation, where a pick-to-light system notifies the picker how many of which item to pick.

Once the item is picked, the tote goes to another workstation for another order pick, or else back to the storage area. When the order is filled, it is conveyed to the packing station.

Other automated equipment suitable for home shopping includes A-frames, carousels and various lifts. A-frames, one of SSI Schaefer's specialities, comprise vertical channels, each holding a different SKU (stock-keeping unit). A sectional conveyor sits underneath it. As the conveyor passes under the correct channel, the required items are shot on to the conveyor, which drops the goods in a tote, carton and so on. When the order is complete, it is taken to a workstation or packing station.

Instead of picking individual orders, users can pick multiple quantities of the same SKU, take them to a work station or picking trolley and let a human picker do the rest, via scanning and/or pick-to-light.

Office Depot uses SSI Schaefer's A-frame, along with pick-to-light for items too big to fit in the A-frame; the larger items are stored in a carton live system. Kiddicare, another SSI Schaefer customer, relies on carton live, using an angled system comprising wheeled racking. The goods are loaded from the back but roll to the front, so that when one item is taken out, the next moves forward.

'Lots of boxes can be loaded in this way without the need for continuous replenishment,' Alibone explains.

Vertical lifts

Vertical lifts and carousels such as those supplied by Couzens Storage System offer a very different, but equally efficient, way to automate hand picking by storing various-sized products in a self-contained unit, delivering them to the picker and carrying out replenishment.

'Users don't need a forklift truck,' explains managing director Keith Couzens, 'as picking is done by hand. The goods are stored in a shelf-like system that either rises and falls, if it's a vertical lift, or rotates in a vertical carousel. The chosen goods are brought to picking level, at which point a light indicates the items to be picked.'

Vertical devices can be used at the end of an aisle or at a workstation, whereas a horizontal carousel moves down an aisle to pick up the desired goods. Vertical lifts, which tend to be enclosed, can offer a variety of extras, including inventory management and biometric scanning to provide access only to authorised pickers. They are not, however, very suitable for intensive picking because of their relatively slow speed.

Conveyors vary widely; companies such as European Conveyor Systems offer things like powered roller and accumulative conveyors. The accumulative conveyor moves a carton, tote or other receptacle in queued zones. After the tote's barcode is scanned, it is sent off into the correct pick zone, each of which holds different SKUs or groups of products. The picker picks items for that tote or cargo and puts it back on to the conveyor, which sends it to another zone in a similar way to a carton live system. At the final pick, the tote is scanned again to check for missing items or to send it to the packing station.

Conveyors can be designed to serve different floors, sending things up and down between mezzanine levels. European Conveyor Systems also offers a cross-belt, which emerged three or four years ago, comprising a horizontal track with individual belts which whizz round and discharge via a chute, each chute containing an entire order.

The conveyors can be combined with Scarda software to monitor the flow of goods and identify any problems. This can interrogate the system to see where things are, so that if a consumer complains that an order is incomplete – or didn't arrive – the retailer can ascertain why.

Transnorm, which pioneered swivel roller technology in the 1990s, offers a SmartSort conveyor that can sort 2,000 different-sized boxes in an hour; roller bars are positioned to suit the characteristics of each parcel. If any barcode can't be read or a carton is in the wrong place, the item is pushed off the conveyor.

Transnorm also introduced a zero pressure conveyor, which keeps cartons at set intervals so that if the conveyor stops for any reason, everything on it stops at the same set distance, or zone length. This ensures that goods don't cram into each other, posing the risk of damage to fragile items or unfinished packaging. 'Even more important,' says David Carroll, 'when the conveyor starts again, the goods flow resumes in an orderly manner.'

The company's VertiSwitch merges product from different levels, or divides goods so that one layer goes to one area, such as a packing station, and another is delivered elsewhere.

Different solution for e-tailers

A large variety of automated equipment has been developed to suit different sorts of organisation. Roger Peart, major accounts manager for VanDerLande Industries, points out that multi-channel retailers require a different solution from pure e-tailers, or 'dotcommers', as he calls them.

'Dotcommers are looking at loads of small orders. A careful analysis of the business is required to come up with the right order picking process. Does it need sortation? Does it need automation at all? Some companies, like game stores, can succeed with batch picking; others need zone picking; some can benefit from pick-to-light. Nice flat-bottomed cartons of a certain size and capacity range can easily go on a conveyor belt with a push-up device underneath that pushes the right carton on to the right place.

'A multi-channel retailer has to decide whether to keep stock centrally and implement two order picking systems – one picking numerous small orders for home delivery and the other fewer, larger orders for store – or to have two separate warehouses.'

VanDerLande provides a wide range of picking and sortation systems. For its compact picking solutions it uses mini-loads. Its zone picking system uses radio frequency terminals, pick-by-voice or pick-to-light, all with automated weighing, carton closing and label printing. And it has a product called 'Visions.ODS', an order distribution system based on goods-to-man, again with mini-loads, to allow up to 1,000 picks per hour.

A number of other automated aids are available to supplement conveyors and picking systems. EXDS provides weighing equipment that can weigh all the items for one order to determine the most suitable carton or other packing material. It also ensures the correct weight and measurements are provided to the parcel carrier, so that the carrier not only can plan for collection and delivery of the order, but also ensure an accurate invoice is generated.

Automatic vehicle loaders come in handy, too, although they are more helpful to firms filling numerous vehicles per day, such as parcel carriers. Vaculex's equipment, based on vacuum technology, can lift up to 200 kilos, for example five boxes from a pallet or ten cartons into a vehicle. Vaculex TP was developed in 2001 specifically for the parcel industry, while last year's Vaculex Parcel Lift added a telescopic conveyor which can load or unload loose items inside a trailer. When an item is retrieved, it is already linked to the conveyor system.

Newlands Engineering and Sovex also offer telescopic loading designed for parcel companies. The booms extend right into the empty vehicle, loading boxes, cartons, sacks and so on.

The kind of automation systems best suited to your needs depends on the sort of products being moved, volumes of sales and so on. But whatever you choose, Flowstore's Simon Dennis warns, keep it flexible. 'If your system isn't flexible, what happens if you change your warehouse software, operations, or even your stock?'

One size definitely does not fit all.