The Rise of ASRS
Automated storage and retrieval systems have served manufacturers for decades, but technical advances and practical considerations are making them more appealing than ever before.
For Cargill Inc., the shift to case-ready meat and customized pallet loads for retailers couldn’t have come at a better time.
In the mid ‘90s, the Minneapolis-based company scrubbed the carousels, buffers and other traditional tools for meat handling in favor of a highly automated system at an Atlanta cut-beef center. Two similar automated storage and retrieval systems (AS/RS) followed, with a fourth scheduled to come on-line in early 2010.
The initiative coincided with demands from major grocers for subprimal cuts that could bypass a store’s butcher shop and go directly to refrigerated cases. As Cargill’s investment and sophistication increased, so did retailers’ demands: mixed loads with product arranged to coincide with a store’s layout became the new marching orders. The sequencing of complex orders would have been ripe for human error and shipping delays with the systems of the past. Now, the company views its infrastructure investment as a strategic advantage that, not incidentally, slashed refrigeration costs and labor requirements.
The dollar value of on-time deliveries and complete orders is difficult to quantify, but powerful forces are reshaping the food business. Maintaining high customer satisfaction can be as critical to a company’s long-term viability as avoiding a crippling recall. Customer satisfaction gets relegated to the soft-savings category of automation initiatives, of course, but the flexibility of AS/RS solutions is making these investments easier to justify in terms of the hard-dollar returns.
Tall cranes moving pallets through narrow aisles is the popular image of AS/RS. Those systems still characterize the technology, but increasingly they are complemented with mini-load systems, automated guided vehicles (AGV) and centralized picking systems. Some pallet-handling suppliers have decoupled rack storage completely from cranes, relying on elevators, row carts and rack moles to store and retrieve pallets in high-density environments.
Pan- and trough-storage systems used in commercial bakeries fit neatly under the AS/RS umbrella, with robotics replacing cranes for the heavy lifting. Weldon Solutions, a York, PA, machine tool shop, made a specialty of these systems in 2003 when it acquired the intellectual assets of Emtrol. Handcarts loaded with heavy baking pans are worker injuries waiting to happen, but factoring in ergonomics into an automation decision is difficult. Even so, this AS/RS application is growing.
“Labor saving was our whole reason for putting the systems in,” Mark Porter, senior vice president of operations at Fort Wayne, IN-based Millie’s Bakeries, says of his firm’s deployment of robotic pan-handlers at five of its seven plants in Michigan, Ohio and Indiana. Three of the plants also have automated trough systems.
Less frequent pan reglazing, more efficient use of floor space and better inventory control are benefits of automated pan storage, but “labor was the sole justification,” Porter emphasizes. “They’re fairly expensive systems,” he allows, but still the company realized a return within three years.
Read the rest of the article from the February 1, 2010 edition of Food Engineering.
