WITRON develops new innovative tote picking system.

Automated Tote System (ATS)

Fully automated picking of whole totes and drinks crates

ARLINGTON HEIGHTS, Ill. -- WITRON Integrated Logistics, has launched a new, fully automated tote picking system on the market. The patent-pending ATS concept enables the automated generation of dispatch units, consisting of totes and/or drinks crates, which have already been filled with goods from the in-house production department or by the supplier. These dispatch units are collected in the ATS without any staff deployment or ID entry, buffered, picked, stacked onto a dispatch unit in a customised and/or store-friendly manner and staged for outbound delivery. These applications are most commonly found in the fresh and temperature-controlled areas of distribution centers in food retail. The solution can also be used in drinks crate picking with great cost efficiency. A real benefit is the complete avoidance of strength-sapping lifting and carrying of heavy totes means that ATS is also setting new standards in ergonomics.

The new system completes the WITRON portfolio of highly efficient modular warehousing and order picking solutions for the retail and wholesale trade and is the ideal complement to the automated picking systems OPM for case picking and DPS for piece picking.

With ATS, the entire material flow is significantly simplified. Firstly, a huge variety of products such as fruit and vegetables, meat or fish items are delivered to the distribution center in totes already packed by the supplier in stacks on single SKU pallets. There, a single identification process takes place centrally. Follow-up in the system is guaranteed by indirect target tracking, thereby completely disposing of the need for time-consuming physical labelling of individual totes with a barcode or other identification. Thanks to the flexibility of the system, the use of whole and half totes, each with different heights, presents no problems. Once the stacks of totes have been removed from the inbound pallet and then separated, highly dynamic stacker cranes known as Picking Mini Loads (PMLs) place the totes in an ASRS (automated storage and retrieval system) for intermediate buffering. To increase system output, several totes can be stored and transported simultaneously in stacks. The PMLs also provide for store-friendly retrieval of the totes to generate dispatch pallets, with each PML able to accept up to four totes simultaneously per trip.

The removed totes are then transported to a stacking device, where all the totes belonging to one client order are stacked mechanically on top of one another and pushed onto a pallet using an efficient pallet loading operation. Specific requirements, such as the unloading sequence in the store, maximum fill level or loading height can be parameterised flexibly according to the client's wishes. Even the generation of double-deck (sandwich) pallets is provided for a way of increasing the shipping volume. The final step is the transportation of the securely stretch-wrapped order pallets to the dispatch area or the intermediate storage area in a pallet warehouse, always taking into account the consolidation of all the order pallets according to client requirements and shipping routes.

The ATS concept offers major benefits for the user:

* High cost-efficiency due to a fully automated process chain throughout the system - no longer any need for staff-intensive repacking and order picking

* 100% zero-errors picking due to order generation in the ASRS

* Generation of store-friendly dispatch units according to client-specific requirements

* No physical labelling or checking of transport units required anymore, since indirect target tracking can be used thanks to branch-free transport and short conveyor lines

* Low energy and construction costs due to modular, compact design

With ATS, WITRON has again succeeded in recognizing market requirements and offering the best possible logistics solution to suit. It has taken the company very little time to win its first project, and there are two more currently in the detailed planning phase.

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