Material handling automation has been commonplace for decades in manufacturing, where material handling automation combined with robots push, pull, lift, store, and retrieve raw materials and finished products. Reducing labor has been the traditional justification for manufacturing automation. However, employing an automation solution to relieve human workers of repetitive, tedious, and dangerous tasks and repurposing them to more productive duties is now the industry standard.

The bar is rising for forward-thinking manufacturers. It’s no longer enough to work smarter and harder through automation – quicker with precision, at scale, and on-demand around the clock is the new profit-making height to reach. Retaining and repurposing skilled operators with years of experience and institutional memory and recruiting new talent in this challenging era of labor scarcity demands new ideas and experienced materials handling support providers.

Warehouses buried in increasing stock-keeping units (SKUs) need a way to maximize floor space and maintain easy inventory access. Highly configurable AS/RS technology optimizes storage space, reduces picking time, minimizes manual processes, and allows greater inventory control.

AS/RS base models support different load sizes, maximum heights, and load types, including shuttle-based storage AS/RS, which are ideal for storing, sorting, and retrieving goods to speed up fulfillment for high-throughput applications with lower SKU counts. Recently, a leading global manufacturer of food and beverage packaging with several locations throughout North America turned to Murata Machinery USA (Muratec) for help in meeting the challenge of its significant and steadily growing production volumes amid a shrinking skilled labor pool.

The food packaging manufacturer needed an automated material handling solution to reduce manual interventions and automate areas requiring labor that was difficult to find at its flagship plant to meet current and new production volume growth. Their manufacturing and distribution facility relied on circular conveyors to feed cases to manual handlers for pallet stacking. Once hand stacked, the pallets were moved by another manual fork truck operator to an automated stretch wrapper. Multiple SKU dimensions also posed a challenge for their existing system, making it difficult to manage the repetitive and physically demanding tasks to meet the required output.

Working with Muratec, the manufacturer replaced its aging automation system with multiple automated high-speed sequencing and sorting AS/RS solutions combined with lifters, palletizing cells, and integrated conveyance. The Uni-SHUTTLE system combined flexible storage functionality with high-capacity transport and sequencing for handling boxes and totes of various sizes on the fly while buffering cases between production and palletizing.

Traveling at 4m/sec = 13.1 feet per second, the system was designed with best-in-class capacity for high-performance throughput and flexible storage functionalities. Its high-capacity transport and sorting capabilities combined with rear hook transfer equipment enabled variable load handling of assorted sizes with the same device.

Shuttle vehicles traveled independently on each level with the high-speed vertical elevators installed on the left and right sides of the aisle, improving system efficiency and fixed-point picking, sequencing, and sortation.

The system integrated the new AS/RS storage/sortation automation with customized software to communicate with the facility’s SAP HOST for routing case management and palletization. Muratec’s Warehouse Control System (WCS) software was custom-built for a PC-based MS operating system and hosted on a dedicated server, allowing staff to monitor and remotely access the Uni-SHUTTLE system from computers throughout the facility. The WCS provided a user-friendly Graphical User Interface (GUI) operator workstation, error recovery, and performance data reports to control the movement of cases within the warehouse.

The Uni-SHUTTLE HP uses the latest technology to increase energy efficiency and reduce power consumption. Shuttles across the combined solution travel independently, allowing for easy maintenance without system shutdown and maximum throughput. Plus, the maintenance deck is located inside the rack, making it easily accessible for maintenance and repair.

Muratec manufactured and managed the installation of the multiple aisle Uni-Shuttle sortation system for buffering cases between production and palletizing. And installed new conveyance systems for transporting cases throughout the facility’s production area.

To facilitate a smooth transition, an onsite personalized team managed the project planning and supervised the installation of all equipment, including existing equipment demolition, receiving, and unloading upon arrival. After installation, Muratec supplied operational and maintenance training for the company’s team.

The Uni-Shuttle sortation system stored/managed 90+% (by volume) of the manufacturer SKUs and transported all cases from all departments completely to a wrapped load, meeting their 24/7 production schedule. Its ability to buffer and deliver cases to the palletizer in exact sequence and quantity without manual intervention, error, or damage, exceeded the manufacturer’s throughput requirements, doubling output and handling more than 3,000 in/out cases per hour of 100+ unique batches at any one time.

The system performed weight & dimensional checks on each case before leaving each department, allowing system adaptability to be different and new product characteristics, including different materials and sizes improving the product management quality and center operations.

Manual intervention controls for operators to optimize in-process performance and throughput allowed for error-handling or recovery procedures, increasing both the accuracy and efficiency of the overall production.

In conclusion: The return on investment (ROI) for this type of sortation AS/RS comes from cost avoidance. From a labor-saving perspective, time saved is money earned. Plus, the automation will not ever call out sick, and it takes direction remarkably. Retaining operators in this difficult era of recruiting workers demanded innovative ideas in automation. For this manufacturer, the Uni-Shuttle automated storage retrieval system, control software system, conveyance, and palletizing cells that integrated with their existing system was the solution to these challenges. Their new automation allowed the facility to repurpose and shift its labor force to more value-added roles, realizing space, labor-saving benefits, and long-term return on investment.

In instances where engineering an automated system or integrating it alongside pre-existing equipment, ease of installation can dramatically impact the amount of downtime required for the upgrade and integration process. An automated system is only as good as it is running so premium-level service and preventative maintenance for the life of the system is also a major long-term cost that can affect ROI. Thus, choosing an experienced automation provider that accommodates the need to balance automation costs and productivity with overall ROI while minimizing downtime and maximizing investment value is imperative.