The challenge: improve accuracy, reduce labor, eliminate damage, and cut energy usage
Cold storage warehouses pose definite challenges to operations and logistics managers who endeavor to have facilities operating at a high level of efficiency. Compared to non-freezer facilities, cold storage warehouses have a higher incidence of product damage, missed product rotation, wrong item fulfillment. Not surprisingly, personnel turnover in cold storage facilities is also higher than in nonfreezer warehouses.
The solution: install a storage retrieval system, control software, and conveying equipment
JTM selected Dematic Corp. to design and build the storage retrieval system, including control software, racking and associated conveying equipment.
Dematic designed the system with a unique double-load remote pallet handling device which can carry two pallets at a time, instead of the classic ASRS machine that typically handles one pallet at a time. When JTM’s storage retrieval machine picks up loads that are coming out of manufacturing it loads up two pallets at a time and then puts away two pallets at a time, which decreases the cycle time of the machine and increases throughput.
When the pallet is on the load handling device it is carried off the ASRS machine into the rack. It performs a function called deep lane storage. When that ASRS machine runs up and down the aisle, on one side it can handle four-deep pallet storage lanes, and on the other side it can handle eight pallet-deep storage lanes. A conventional ASRS machine only goes one-, two- or three-pallets deep, using a fork attached to the machine, because that is the maximum it can reach. But with the Dematic drive-off remote, it can run a pallet 30 feet off into the eight-deep side and drop it into storage, and then return back to the ASRS machine.
The results are in
The ASRS eliminated the excess air exchange in and out of the freezer, making it more efficient and reducing energy costs. JTM also lost all of the cost associated with the maintenance of fork lifts, and the labor and travel time associated with physically operating them. Now, JTM’s order pickers are more efficient and more productive, they simply push a button and out comes the SKUs they need, and they just pick right to the order pallet.
The product and the infrastructure in the freezer is safer as well. "Zero product damage, zero rack damage," continues Maas. "Our inventory is always correct. Inventory issues were abounding before. The ASRS always gets the correct item number, and it always rotates the product properly.
- Improved order fulfillment accuracy to 100 percent
- Reduced warehouse labor by 75 percent
- Eliminated product and warehouse damage
- Cut energy usage by 66 percent
