A warehouse receiving area of a large retail clothing manufacturer was typically in chaos.

Trucks at their receiving docks were unloaded manually and the cartons had to be placed on pallets by hand for warehouse picking operations. The requirements for what went on what pallet were often very different not only per truck but also per order across multiple trucks so that an ever-shifting maze of pallet pick positions (and thus hand stacking laborers) was required at any given time. At peak periods (which are common in clothing retail) trucks were often stranded at the dock waiting to be unloaded.

Not all of their suppliers were consistent or correct in identifying individual cartons correctly and sometimes even contents were missing. So, a labor-intensive manual carton identification, checking, and re-labeling process was utilized. For a given truck or order, they typically knew ahead of time the carton quantity and contents of each carton. If there was some way of planning their palletizing requirements ahead of time and then automatically sorting cartons, they could get the product into the warehouse faster and with less manual labor. An added bonus would be the ability to detect any cartons with missing contents and identifying what was missing.

The clothing manufacturer decided a new and improved material handling and control system was desperately needed to minimize labor and maximize quality. A carton conveyor path was established to allow quick carton unloading from trucks and movement of cartons to labeling stations with further transport to a sorting unit that diverted cartons to positions for the cartons to be placed on pallets.

Before the cartons moved to the labeling area, an automatic scan and weighing system was put in place in order to identify and examine each carton. The addition of a combination PLC and PC based solution including Sortation Management Controller (SMC) custom software provided real time diagnostics and easy configuration of which lanes product should be delivered. Examining their expected receipts to determine the preferred method of carton palletizing (i.e. by size, color, style, etc.), and electronically downloading the carton bar code ID along with the assigned palletizing position and its expected weight to the SMC PC. When the trucks arrived and were unloaded, the cartons were conveyed to the automatic bar code scan / weigh system.

The SMC would then examine the carton ID and its weight and direct the PLC as to where the carton should go. Valid carton ID's within acceptable weight limits were directed to the conveyor to be placed on pallets. Invalid ID's and/or unacceptable weighing results caused the SMC to direct the PLC to take the cartons to the labeling area. The software allowed the operator choices as to how to route failed, unknown or unidentifiable cartons. The information about these cartons was used to help fine-tune the system.

The resulting success that was achieved by adding this automated receiving process can be measured by an 80% increase in throughput (think output but nothing goes "out" - it moves "through" the receiving system). Also quality control achieved a huge reduction in mistakes - down to a fraction of what they were before the process was in place. Success!!

The solution proved to be a "perfect fit"!