I have met end-customers and system integrators alike who claim that what we deliver cannot be done. Despite hundreds of successful installations across the world, they maintain their viewpoint. Perhaps FOMU is the explanation.
Because automating the entire process of lifting goods from the pallets and putting them in trays ready for storage is considered either too complex to be done, or that the automation project in itself will be so complex that it is likely to become a mess.
With the challenges facing warehouses today, they should be more scared of FOMO than of FOMU.
It is true that the process of removing goods from pallets and sorting them in trays is one of the more complex operations in most warehouses. Especially when there is a large variety of goods. Solving this task with manual labor is timely and costly, and with labor being hard to find and retain, the warehouses also face uncertainty about future operations.
The Körber Layer Picker in combination with our Downstream equipment – our full Pallet-to-Tray solution - ends this uncertainty. It picks 98% of all retail goods, including fragile products like chips, yoghurt, open crates, as well as odd-sized and heavy products such as PET bottles. The Downstream solution can singularize, tilt, and turn cases on the fly in any desired orientation and load them onto trays in multiple patterns depending on the product mix.
Switching this process from manual to full automation removes all worries about manual processes including finding the right labor. Not to mention how much faster the goods are handled, the lesser space required, reducing errors, and the possibilities of scaling the solution in the future.
Just because you have never done it before, it does not mean that the project will be a mess. Our large install base is proof that we can deliver automation equipment and software for the Pallet-to-Tray part of your operation and integrate it seamlessly with other software and equipment.
With the labor struggles and wages going up, warehouses need to worry more about their operational costs than their capital investments. And they need to worry a lot more about missing out on automating the most labor intensive and complex part of their operation than on messing up a project that to us is business as usual.
