Choosing an Automatic Palletizer to Fit Your Needs

(From the Science of Palletizing book)

Hand stacking cases into pallet loads for storage or direct distribution has been around since the very first packaging lines were installed. However, as production rates increased to levels of 20 cases per minute and beyond, an automatic means for stacking cases became necessary. This created a need for an automatic solution, known today as the “palletizer”.

The newly released book, The Science of Palletizing, discusses in detail the various types of palletizing solutions, common elements, packaging trends and tips on selecting the appropriate palletizing solution. The following are a few of the topics covered in the 72-page educational book.

Conventional Palletizer

A conventional palletizer arranges the product that is coming down a conveyor into a given pattern onto a stripper plate and places the layer onto the pallet. Conventional palletizers fall into two main categories: low speed and high speed. Low speed palletizers stack 1 – 10 cases per minute. High speed palletizers stack over 150 cases per minute. Both low speed and high speed conventional palletizers can have a floor level infeed, fixed at 3’ or a high level infeed, fixed at 10’. In general, if the production requirement is high speed, a conventional palletizer is the most likely solution.

Robotic Palletizer

A robotic palletizer uses an end effector (or gripper) to pick-up the product that is coming down the conveyor and places it onto the pallet. Robotic palletizing solutions come in four basic designs: Cartesian, scara, articulating arm and gantry. The most prevalent palletizing robot is the articulating arm. It is the most flexible and allows for the fastest robotic palletizing speeds.

Why Buy a Palletizer

How does one determine the need for a palletizer? There are many answers to this question, again unique to each situation. The following are some reasons companies choose to purchase automatic palletizing solutions:

The cost of the palletizer offsets the cost of manual labor for palletizing.
Increase in forklift traffic makes the environment unsafe for people to be manually stacking.
OSHA standards regarding weight and repetitive motion limitations.
Job related back injuries are costly and can increase a company's insurance premiums.
Where increase in throughput makes manually stacking impracticable.
Automatic palletizers stack a more consistent and accurate load minimizing damage that occurs during shipping.
Challenge of labor pool availability and the desire of the labor pool to perform manual palletizing tasks.
An automatic palletizer always shows up for work!

Factors to Consider

Now that you have read about the fundamentals of palletizing and identified all the options available, you are probably asking yourself "What palletizing solution fits my needs?" The best technology and the best method of palletizing is the one that takes advantage of the plant constraints at the least amount of cost and utilizes the least amount of valuable floor space. For any set of plant conditions the answer can be different. Factors that influence this decision include:

Production throughput
Available space and location of palletizer with respect to packaging area
Package type and speed; both current and future needs
Frequency of SKU change over
Pattern complexity
Load built on pallet, slip sheet or unitized
Accessories required
Number of products and patterns
Maintenance requirements and resources
Flexible and upgradeable design
Life of palletizer
Interface requirements with upstream and downstream equipment
Total Cost of Ownership - including initial purchase, freight, installation, maintenance, spare parts, cost of operation, training, etc.

Palletizer Truisms

In identifying a palletizer that best fits your needs, there are a few "Palletizer Truisms" that may help clarify some of the competitive advantages that one type of palletizer has over the other.

Robotic palletizers can more accurately place bags, only a robotic palletizer can create an overlapping pallet load of bags.
Conventional palletizers can achieve the higher speeds, typically those over 80 cases per minute need to be handled by a conventional palletizer.
Robotic palletizers are capable of handling case sizes under 4".
High level palletizers are often the choice when a plant is already using high level accumulation conveyor.
Both conventional and robotic palletizers are able to create complex patterns and handle a variety of package types.

If you would like a or have questions on a specific palletizing applications please contact us or call toll free at 800-628-4065.


Username:
Password:
Email: