Made to Reduce Heavy Manual Labor and Increase Output

SSI Flat Pack Picking is a turnkey system for reliable, fully automated handling of a wide range of bulky durable good items – specially developed for the furniture industry but works with other products too. This order picking solution grew out of an initiative between SSI SCHAEFER specialists, who collaborated with a multinational furnishings company to realize its commercial potential. This material handling process utilizes the automated SSI Flat Pack Picking solution and complements a high-bay warehouse, which can serve as an automatic pallet buffer for picking. Along the buffer aisle, four RO-BER FP150 series gantry robots do the heavy picking, accessing A-items – which are provided statically – as well as B- and C- items – which are provided dynamically – within the respective action areas. The gantry robots are equipped with multifunctional grippers that automatically adapt to both the dimensions of the items and the type of packaging by means of servo-motor-adjustable suction cups. The gantry robots and grippers were developed by RO-BER Industrieroboter GmbH, a subsidiary of SSI SCHAEFER. Vision technology, in combination with the WAMAS® logistics software, supports this process, allowing each picking robot to quickly identify the proper position of the requested item. Items up to 8’ or 2.5 m in length and weighing more than 132 Lbs. / 60 kg are safely picked up from the source pallet and transferred to the ready-to-use order pallet. The removal of intermediate layers is also fully automated. The stored SSI Pack Pattern Generator ensures a safe, optimized arrangement of the items on the order pallets, which are prepared for further processing via a buffer as part of the outbound process.