Do you know that 80% of all items are transported on a pallet in some unspecified time in the future of their journey?
When you’re counting on handbook labor to put your merchandise on pallets, you are not alone. Nonetheless, the final decade has pushed factories of all sizes in varied industries, corresponding to meals and beverage, prescription drugs, and basic manufacturing, to rethink workforce utilization and undertake automated palletizers.
Whether or not you are going through labor shortages, excessive insurance coverage prices attributable to office accidents, or the necessity to shut effectivity and productiveness gaps to make sure progress, automating your end-of-line processes is an important transformation challenge to prioritize.
This text supplies an outline of the forms of automated palletizers, how they function, their affect on your small business, and the steps to implement one.
What’s an Automated Palletizer?
An automatic palletizer is a robotic system designed to robotically prepare and stack merchandise or packages onto pallets for delivery, storage, or distribution. It makes use of superior know-how to carry out duties historically completed by handbook labor, corresponding to choosing up gadgets from a conveyor belt and inserting them in particular patterns on a pallet.
The two Kinds of Automated Palletizers
Automated palletizers may be categorized into 2 primary classes: Conventional robots or Industrial robots and collaborative robots (cobots)
Conventional robots (industrial) excel in high-volume, repetitive duties, dealing with heavy payloads at excessive speeds. They require important funding, massive footprints, security fencing, and specialised employees for operation and upkeep.
Collaborative robots (cobots), however, prioritize flexibility and adaptableness. They work safely alongside people with out in depth obstacles and are simply reprogrammable for various duties. Cobots are typically extra reasonably priced and space-efficient, making them appropriate for smaller operations or restricted ground areas. Nonetheless, they sometimes have decrease payload capacities and function at slower speeds than conventional robots.
The selection between conventional robots and cobots will depend on particular operational wants. Components to contemplate embody manufacturing quantity, process selection, accessible house, finances, and workforce talent degree.
Conventional robots go well with large-scale, high-speed operations, whereas cobots provide versatility and accessibility for numerous or altering manufacturing environments.
Advantages of Automating Palletizing
Reduce Labor Prices and Overcome Worker Shortage
Guide palletizing incurs important labor prices, together with wages, advantages, additional time, and bills associated to hiring and coaching attributable to turnover. Factories additionally face greater upkeep and downtime prices from employee absences, holidays, and departures, resulting in manufacturing delays. The recurring bills of recruiting and coaching replacements add substantial overhead, notably in high-turnover industries.
There is a clear development away from jobs involving strenuous handbook duties like heavy lifting, that are each bodily taxing and mentally unfulfilling. This desire is mirrored in financial knowledge, in keeping with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, 45% of sturdy items manufacturing jobs in the US stay vacant.
The labor shortages producers face right this moment are more likely to persist. Deloitte predicts in its 2024 manufacturing business outlook report that even when each expert employee in America have been employed, there would nonetheless be 35% extra unfilled job openings within the sturdy items manufacturing sector than accessible expert staff. By 2030, they challenge a scarcity of greater than two million American manufacturing staff.
Automating palletizing allows your invaluable workers to do extra and develop together with your firm. As an employer of selection, scale back your dependency on hard-to-find labor and create jobs that individuals wish to do.
Achieve productiveness and effectivity
Automated palletizers can function 24/7 which significantly will increase output in comparison with handbook processes. This increase is significant for assembly rising demand or seizing new market alternatives. Producers unable to spend money on automated palletizing might lose market share to extra agile rivals.
By adopting superior automated methods, you will outpace rivals with superior effectivity, high quality, and cost-effectiveness. This allows you to provide higher costs and better high quality merchandise with pallet consistency, securing your market place and profitable extra contracts.
Automated cobot palletizers are recognized to supply flexibility and adaptableness – they’re normally simple to program to altering wants. This flexibility retains you agile in a dynamic market, making certain long-term progress and competitiveness.
Present a safer office
Automating your palletizing cell can considerably scale back the chance of accidents associated to repetitive motions, heavy lifting, and publicity to hazardous supplies. Producers who don’t automate might face greater insurance coverage premiums and potential prices associated to office accidents and related litigation.
Guide materials dealing with, which incorporates palletizing, is a big threat issue for MSDs. In line with the Nationwide Institute for Occupational Security and Well being , about 30% of overexertion accidents within the office have been related to lifting duties
Automating your palletizing course of reduces prices, addresses labor shortages, boosts productiveness, and creates a safer work setting. This allows your workers to tackle extra significant duties and ensures constant pallet high quality, prioritizing your buyer and model.
Methods to Get Began with Automated Palletizing
Step 1: Define your small business wants
Automating your palletizing cell course of begins by outlining your small business challenges and alternatives. At Robotiq, we now have developed a complete grid, the Strategic Crucial Framework.
Designed to be a thought-provoking course of, it guides stakeholders in ‘scoring’ their challenges to resolve and covers totally different facets of automating duties (course of, engineering, upkeep, individuals and finance). Spending time at this step is inspired to align the choice course of in the appropriate strategic course.
Step 2: Choose the appropriate resolution
Understanding the present market panorama is a vital step. Deciding on an possibility with out contemplating all accessible options would possibly end in overlooking viable alternate options. It’s important to undertake this step earlier than committing to anybody resolution.
For a basic overview, the accessible options may be divided into two main classes: Conventional robots and Collaborative robots.
Conventional Robots |
Collaborative Robots |
|
Greatest resolution for factories with .. |
– a excessive quantity of the identical product to palletize – a continuing manufacturing quantity all year long – greater than 1 shift of operation – packing containers to palletize weighing over 30kg (66 lbs) – a couple of operator doing handbook palletizing |
– a low to medium quantity of manufacturing |
Advantages and benefits |
– Excessive effectivity and velocity |
– Small footprint |
Drawbacks |
– Massive footprint |
– Very restricted throughput and pallet peak |
Every of those classes consists of varied palletizing options, every with its personal distinctive advantages and dangers. For an in depth evaluation of the options accessible in the marketplace, we invite you to obtain the Automated Palletizing Purchaser’s Information.
Step 3: Consider the Value
As a basic estimate, a collaborative robotic palletizer for a small to medium-sized operation can vary from $50,000 to $150,000, whereas the normal robotic palletizer can price upwards of $500,000 or extra. When evaluating the full price of an automatic palletizing system, you must undertake a complete method that considers each preliminary and ongoing bills, in addition to future scalability and adaptability.
Listed below are the important thing factors to contemplate:
1. Value Parts
- Preliminary Funding: Contains the acquisition worth, integration with current methods, customization to fulfill particular wants, and potential vendor lock-in.
- Working Prices: Embody vitality consumption, upkeep and repairs, coaching for workers, and software program updates or licensing charges.
- Further Prices: Take into account bills associated to downtime and the price of scaling or adjusting the system sooner or later.
2. Finances Concerns
- Finances Pricing vs. Quoted Pricing: Distinguish between estimated finances prices and precise worth quotes to make sure correct comparisons. Pay attention to distributors’ beneficial contingency funds for surprising bills.
- Important vs. Good-to-Have Options: Clearly outline which options are mandatory in your operations and that are optionally available. Use detailed specs to prioritize important options and remove pointless ones, probably requesting revised quotes from distributors.
3. Preliminary Funding Components
- Integration: Assess how properly the palletizing system will align together with your manufacturing unit structure, processes, and current methods. Ask distributors about compatibility, required modifications, and examples of profitable integrations.
- Customization: Decide if the system meets your important necessities out-of-the-box or if extra customization is required, each initially and over time to take care of performance.
- Vendor Lock-In: Take into account the long-term implications of counting on a particular vendor, together with the way it would possibly have an effect on scalability, flexibility, and future prices.
- Scalability: Consider whether or not the system can develop together with your wants, the prices related to upgrades, and if it permits for incremental investments as necessities evolve.
4. Working Prices Particulars
- Vitality Prices: Fluctuate based mostly on system effectivity, utilization period, and native electrical energy charges.
- Upkeep and Repairs: Common maintenance is crucial. Perceive who will carry out upkeep, the phrases of service contracts, and the provision of spare components.
- Coaching Prices: Issue within the bills for coaching workers to function and preserve the system successfully.
- Programming and Software program Updates: Account for software program licensing charges, subscription prices, and whether or not updates or programming modifications require exterior assist.
5. Sensible Suggestions for Analysis
- Vendor Questions: Put together particular questions on integration capabilities, customization choices, scalability, and assist providers to make sure the system meets your wants.
- Value Monitoring: Hold an in depth document of all potential bills to realize a extra correct estimate of each preliminary and ongoing prices.
Step 4: Calculate your ROI
Now, understanding the preliminary and possession prices from the earlier chapter, the following logical step is to challenge the Return on Funding (ROI). Listed below are the formulation and elements that must be thought of to calculate your return on funding:
PRODUCTIVITY GAINS
- Cycle time: Period to finish a particular process or produce an merchandise.
- Output: Variety of models processed per unit of time.
- Scalability: Capacity to extend quantity with minimal extra price.
LABOR IMPACT
- Labor prices: Present handbook labor prices, together with wages and advantages.
- Labor effectivity: Productiveness and effectivity of handbook labor.
- Labor flexibility: Capacity to reassign labor for varied duties.
COST OF OWNERSHIP
To outline the full price of possession, the operation prices must be added to the preliminary funding by contemplating a particular interval (sometimes predefined by the enterprise) for every resolution within the comparability.
INVESTMENT RISK ASSESSMENT
Any funding can have dangers. It is very important take into account them and have a mitigation plan in the event that they occur.
- Determine dangers: Potential dangers corresponding to technological failures, market modifications, or regulatory points.
- Danger mitigation: Doc methods to mitigate every threat and calculate the potential price related to mitigation.
- Embody a threat consider your ROI comparability:
Have a look at your manufacturing unit’s earlier, large-scale, cross-functional funding initiatives. Have been they on time and on finances? If not, add that threat issue to your ROI calculation for Conventional Robots palletizing options.
INTANGIBLE BENEFITS
These is probably not clear numbers, however they’re qualitative beneficial properties that should be thought of in your resolution course of.
- Security: Lower prices related to office accidents, medical go away, accidents, and near-misses.
- Worker engagement: Consider the affect on workforce morale and the rise in worker retention.
- High quality enchancment: Calculate the discount of prices associated to errors.
- Market fame: Estimate the constructive affect on the corporate’s fame (each with clients and job candidates) for innovation and effectivity.
Depalletizing: What You Must Know
Depalletizing is the method of systematically eradicating packing containers, baggage, or different packaged gadgets from a loaded pallet. It’s usually step one in a producing or distribution course of, the place uncooked supplies or completed items arrive on a pallet and should be unpacked.
Key Variations Between Palletizing and Depalletizing:
- Unloading Challenges: With palletizing, the robotic has full management over the location of things on the pallet. Depalletizing includes unloading a pallet that was loaded by another person, so the merchandise positions could also be unpredictable.
- Merchandise Motion in Transit: Pallets can shift throughout transportation, inflicting the gadgets on the pallet to maneuver from their authentic positions. Depalletizing methods should have the ability to account for this motion, not like palletizing.
- Robotic Imaginative and prescient Necessities: Depalletizing usually requires the usage of robotic imaginative and prescient methods to adapt to the uncertainty of the pallet structure, whereas palletizing can generally be completed with out imaginative and prescient.
- Upstream/Downstream Processes: Palletizing sometimes happens on the finish of the manufacturing workflow, whereas depalletizing occurs originally, interacting with totally different processes.
- Facility Structure: Palletizing and depalletizing methods are sometimes positioned in several areas inside a facility to optimize their integration with upstream and downstream operations.
Understanding these key variations is essential when deploying robotic automation for palletizing and depalletizing duties.
Conclusion
Automated palletizers increase productiveness, deal with labor shortages, and improve office security. They enhance throughput, take away bodily demanding duties, and scale back damage dangers – offering a aggressive edge for factories. Investing in automated palletizing is a strategic transfer to streamline operations and place your group for long-term progress.