Automated Storage & Retrieval Systems

Warehouse and Operations as a Career

And it’s another week, a very productive week, and I hope a Safe week for all of us! Marty here again with warehouse and operations as a career, and today I’d like to talk about a piece of equipment, well, in my experience, us warehouse folks will either love or grow to despise. I may have been a little overly dramatic there, but I’ve known some people that, well, just couldn’t or wouldn’t make it work. My experience has been with what is called a mini load. I think the official name, or what it really is would be a ASRS or an Automated Storage and Retrieval System. Now these can include, and I imagine that they can be stand-alone components, anyway, things like Pallet Shuttles, even mobile racking systems, and they can be huge! And then you have pallet conveyor systems, and of course box or tote conveyors. Like I mentioned, I’ve played with the Mini Load myself. I was one that liked it. I won’t say I loved it; however, I was willing to give it a try, and I learned to like it. No seriously, it did the job and did it well, I think I was afraid of it breaking down, and it did, but not nearly as often as my nightmares of it stopping. I’ll give you a little history and concerns I had with them and then we’ll speak to what they are and maybe where there going or what we can expect in the near future! Today’s topic us actually brought up by a long-time listener, a supervisor from California. Dave and I tried getting our schedules in sync this week so he could bring some experience working with the larger ASRS systems to the show but, well, we’re both in Op’s and time wasn’t on our side! Maybe we’ll be able to bring him aboard in the next few weeks and he can get us caught up!

So, once upon a time, I was involved in the building of a couple of new facilities, it was pretty cool, we had a chance to build a building like we Op’s people would want it. The corporate engineers and planners really did a great job with them. I got lost again, So, what is a mini load? Mini Load is a designation given for the tote or small boxes ASRS system. You’ll have a stacker crane in between 2 aisles, and these aisles can be pretty narrow. A stacker crane is a Traveling, Lifting and Reaching mechanism that will run the length and height of our storage aisle and can place or retrieve our product or storage totes. And they can do this with speed, cruising the aisle at something like 600 feet per minute and a lifting speed of like 350 feet per minute. The theory behind one is simple. It’ll be connected to your WMS, we’ll place the product on the carriage, probably scan it into the system. The bar code will have the quantity, product number, manufacture date, maybe expiration date, country of origin etc, really anything our merchandising department would like to know about it encoded there! Then we’ll push a button and off it goes, storing it in a slot, one of possibly thousands of bins within its system. Anyway, this particular facility was debating the merits of installing a mini load ASRS or a configuration or mixture of pallet flow and carton flow racking. Flow racking is cool on its own. Typically, you’re looking at slanted roller racking that will be fed or replenished from the back, either cartons or pallets meaning you’ll have a replenishment only aisle feeding the product to the slots. From a selector’s perspective, and when our WMS and replenishment person is working properly, we’ll never arrive to an empty slot. The thought process at the time was, and remember this was 15 years ago, when both systems were being developed into what you’re seeing now, was how to develop the most efficient and ergonomic selection environment for the associates. Remember travel time is a bad thing in our business. Both for inbound and outbound shifts. Putaways and Replenishments require travel time. These systems help with both sides concerns!

So Working the mini load is cool. One of the things I learned quickly was you have to stay organized. I mean our work area has to be organized. In my world at the time, product would come in, it’d be unloaded, broken down and separated according to the purchase order. Now a mini load typically is going to be slotted with our smaller, slower moving items, at least back then anyway. With our warehouse set up for freight movement we were having one case or 2 or 3 cases of an item placed on a pallet which was brought over to the mini load area and we’d grab the case, scan the receiving tag and either place the case in a tote or place it directly on the roller carriage, depending on the size, shape and weight of the product. Then push a button and either it’d be whisked away by the stacker crane or it’d be placed in the que to be grabbed on a subsequent trip. And this was neat, you could work way ahead of the machine. You wouldn’t beat it, but you could keep it busy. The problem was all those pallets. You’d have 40 of them, not even a layer of freight on each, and then you’d have to stack them up and move them out of your way. If you weren’t feeding the machine you were getting behind. Well, it didn’t take long until we painted off a little area and instructed the forklifts and pallet runners to place the boxes or cases in the staging area and taught them not to leave the pallets. Now everybody that’s listening is freaking out that we were putting the product on the floor. Yes, we did, but the floor was painted, and it was designated as a staging area. Our plan described how no product would be left in the area more that 2 hours and the entire area would be cleaned at the end of each shift. It worked and we were able to keep up with the workload.

That’s just a mini load, smaller cases, manageable items. Picture an ASRS handling pallets or parts, even large parts! Maybe you’ve seen those Car vending machines or vending storage garages for our boats. You know, you drive it onto a sled or slip component and it raises it up and racks it or retrieves it with a ticket or code we’d enter through a keypad. Those are Automated Storage and Retrieval Systems.

I urge you to check out ASRS in your favorite browser. You’ll find some interesting reading, and I think we’re going to be amazed at their growth over the next couple of years. I made a couple of calls today to friends in the industry, one of them being a building maintenance manager. I asked him what was the first word that popped into his mind if I said ASRS. He said breakdowns. He works at a facility that uses a large carousel system, another type of ASRS that uses miles of conveyor belts and roller junctions. He loves his job, but he’ll admit his team gets stressed when something goes down. Everything stops, and they must get it running again. He explained there are redundant systems, backup’s and most of their parts are universal, all that helps but the bottom line is it must stay up and running.

Luckily, he says they run at a 99.1 percent up time and his selection side is rarely interrupted. Check’em out, I think you’ll enjoy about learning about them.

I briefly mentioned carton flow and pallet flow earlier. A lot of places utilize the function. You may be familiar with what is called push back? Our push back carton flow is great for storing smaller low velocity items but that’s exactly what it is. It’s just storage, we must load it from the front meaning during the selection process someone will need to get in our way to replenish the slot when we’ve picked through it. A true carton flow or pallet flow system will be fed through the other aisle. How can I describe this? We’d be picking on aisle A, then we’d have a replenishment only aisle and then we’d have B aisle to drive down. Only forklifts and stockers would be in our replenishment aisles, feeding product and pallets to us order selectors. They should never run dry! Now these slots are usually high-volume movers, our most popular and most selected items. There’s another perfect subject for you to look up! There are some great YouTube videos out there on carton and pallet flow systems, you’ll be amazed where it’s going.

The efficiencies such systems can bring to us in op’s are tremendous. I know, you’ll hear how they’re going to replace us, the workers. There not, they’re going to make our work easier. Yes, we may not need to grab the case from the slot but we’re going to have to move the freight. People will be imputing the data, making it move throughout the facility. Change yes, a good thing, absolutely.

We’ll I hope you’ll take a minute and check out these two topics online. If you’d like to share an experience or comment on either, shoot us an email to [e-mail] and maybe I can get with Dave, we’ll have another episode on the topics. Until next week, wash our hands, maintain social distance and please remember our first priority is Safety, our loved ones deserve it!