Case Study Comparisons: Gaining Efficient Distribution Flow

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Case Study Comparisons Gaining Efficient
Distribution Flow

• Professor Steve Derby
• Flexible Manufacturing Center
• Mechanical Engineering Department
• Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
• Troy, NY 12180
• 518-276-6991 518-276-2623 Fax
  derbys_at_rpi.edu

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How Does Your Factory Flow ?

• Raw materials or components enter production line
• Finished goods in boxes or shrink wrap need to be
  shipped to the customer
• Required operations but want to minimize cost
• Customer does not see difference

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Factory Flow IS Distribution

• Within the Factory, one finds
• Kanbans
• JIT
• RF tracking
• But these may not assess the method of how the
  production output is routed and shipped

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Production Output Palletized

• Majority of products are palletized for shipping
• Much is done manually
• High Speed Palletizers have been around for
  decades
• Much has been written about the benefits of High
  Speed Palletizers

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High Speed Palletizers

• Make tremendous sense when producing great
  volumes of one product i.e. Corn Flakes
• A solution for production volume when big in
  number and/or in physical size
• May be dedicated to one line

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Palletizers

• But what if the product is smaller?
• Seemingly fast production rates yield only
  moderate number of boxes
• Single line does not need high speed palletizer

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Case Study 1 Factory Floor
End of line
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Case Study 1

• Each line does not warrant its own High Speed
  Palletizer
• 6 lines personal care goods
• Company implemented a conveyor system leading to
  second floor
• Accumulated 1 pallet load for each line and then
  routed to High Speed Palletizer

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Conveyor System
To Second Floor
End of line
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Case Study 1

• This company removed entire conveyor system,
  accumulator and High Speed Palletizer
• Now has 1 person at the end of each line manually
  stacking boxes
• Forklift comes through plant to get filled pallets

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Current Factory Floor
Forklift path
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Case Study 1

• Could use smaller palletizers at the end of each
  line
• Sizes and types of palletizer options explored
  later
• Forklift could be replaced by AGVs or pallet
  highway, but currently not implemented

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Case Study 2 Factory Floor
Accumulators
Wall
End of line
Palletizer
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Case Study 2

• Each line does not warrant its own High Speed
  Palletizer
• 14 lines paper goods
• Company implemented a conveyor system leading to
  second room
• Accumulated 1 pallet load for each line and then
  routed to High Speed Palletizer

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Current Factory Floor
Wall
End of line
Forklift path
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Case Study 2

• Company removed accumulators and High Speed
  Palletizer
• Now has 6-8 people in the conveyor loop manually
  stacking boxes
• Forklift comes to conveyor loop to get filled
  pallets
• Floor space savings
• Could use pallet highway

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Proposed Factory Floor
Wall
End of line
Forklift path
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Case Study 2

• This company is looking to use many smaller
  palletizers
• Upgrade to current manual setup would be minimal
• Not worth savings to place palletizers at end of
  lines due to lack of floor space

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Palletizing Options

• Manual
• Robotic
• Layer Forming
• High Speed
• Lower Cost

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Manual

• Still the easiest to implement even if not cost
  effective
• Huge number of companies still do this
• Worker injury issues

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Robotic

• Best for mixed case loads
• Can handle different products

Columbia/Okura
Samsung
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Layer Forming

• Range of box rates

Columbia
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High Speed

• Can really fly

Kettner
Kettner Dual Head
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Lower Cost

• Some handle more than 1 pallet

Priority One
Stackbot
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Case Study Possibilities

• Some lower cost palletizers handle more than 1
  pallet
• Not a big transfer rate
• Need to look at tradeoffs and costs
• Will look at Manual vs. Centralized Vs.
  Distributed

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Case Study 1 Possibilities

• Robotic most likely too costly
• Lower end Layer Forming, though it takes floor
  space and cost
• Stackbot at end of each line is good

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Case Study 2 Possibilities

• Robotic could be used to handle several pallets
  worth if sufficient reach
• Priority One system good if rework conveyor loop
• Stackbot for each pair of pallets is good

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Conclusions

• Efficient Distribution Flow a product of many
  factors
• New factory or old
• Product size
• Production rate
• Available floor space

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Conclusions

• Distributed Palletizing may be a viable option
  that might not be the first guess