A practical example: The trolley-less system in operation at Conbipel in Italy
Its modular design means that the trolley-less system harmonises with any number of different types of materials handling equipment.
Goods receipt
On arrival the goods are hung directly onto the telescopic conveyor in the truck – there is no need to define the size of the transport unit nor must any trolleys be handled.After the barcode has been read and the data (e.g. model, colour, size) has been transmitted to the warehouse management system, the garments are fed onto the automatic 200G fence conveyor via manual slick rails.
The garments then reach the goods receipt buffer where they go into interim storage on slick rails.
Store
To forward the goods into the warehouse the routing labels on the individual blocks of garments are first read with a hand scanner and then pushed onto a 200G fence conveyor.Once at their destination point, the blocks of garments are directed into their respective storage areas and onto a slick rail by means of a controllable drop-off function.
Where there is only a low throughput rate, the main storage area can be operated completely by hand with a slick rail as the means of transport.
The operator uses a hand scanner to establish the correct storage location and then pushes blocks of garments to their respective storage areas. A storage area posting is made by scanning the routing and storage labels on the goods again.
Picking
Batch picking is the first step in the 2-step picking process. Here the different customer orders are combined into logical batches in order to optimise transport routes and thus substantially increase the picking performance.Transport to the batch storage (buffer) is effected first via a manual slick rail and then via an automatic fence conveyor.
From the batch buffer the stack of goods moves into the second step of the picking process. To enable distribution to the individual branches, the goods are separated by transport spindles and transferred to the shop sorter. This is then followed by conveyance to the sorting destinations.
The shop sorter now allocates the garments to the customer’s branches or individual customers. This concludes the picking process.
Despatch
The various garments destined for one branch are grouped together and put into interim storage in the despatch area.The goods leave the despatch buffer storage as soon as a truck reports in. The sorted garments are loaded from the slick rail onto the fence conveyor and transported to the despatch door. Controlled drop-off points regulate the transfer of the goods onto the slick rail.
The truck is loaded via a semi-automatic telescopic conveyor. The goods are then removed and hung onto the rails in the truck.
