Logistics for the beverage industry – fully automated order-picking

Logistics in the beverage industry are characterised by rising numbers of different articles, falling order sizes per article, and shortened ordering intervals. This results in a higher workload for order-picking and upsized staffing requirements. For an international beverage producer, Krones is building a first automated order-picking solution available round the clock.
The procedures involved cover customer orders, truck route planning, order-picking planning and route processing for order-picking with the EOP-A order-picking system. This is followed by truck loading and deliveries to customers.
In the client’s system 550 articles can be order-picked

• on 672 tracks used to buffer the articles for automatic order-picking 
• with a system rating of 5,500 packs per hour, of which 4,000 packs per hour with automatic layer and single-pack order-picking 
• plus 1,500 packs an hour with semi-automatic layer order-picking.

These are the building blocks for logistics in the beverage industry with the automatic EOP order-picking system:

• Depalletising
  • Automatic depalletising station, which removes complete layers at a time from homogeneous pallets of fulls, and passes them automatically into the pack buffer via a pack spacing system
  • Manual depalletising station for packs that by reason of their dimensions, for example, cannot be handled automatically
• Pack buffer
  • Storage of the single packs pending sequentially accurate provision for palletising in line with the customer’s order. Removal of the packs from the buffer at high speed, layer-compliant positioning and assembly to form an order pallet using the layer palletiser.
  • Manual pack buffer, for handling slow-selling articles

The EOP-A order-picking system offers numerous advantages for logistics in the beverage industry:

• accurate inventories in realtime 
• automated order-picking available round the clock 
• monitored loading thanks to scanning and transport management
• stringent compliance with the first-in-first-out principle 
• effective utilisation of the lift-truck resources 
• complete-coverage tracking of pallets and packs with batch information and selective recall procedures for goods already delivered 
• optimised manual working in line with ergonomic principles 
• reduced labour costs per order-picked pallet