Improved Product And Material Flow

With ever changing customer behaviours, new digital communication challenges and the rapid increase in eCommerce business means the UK’s leading consumer delivery specialist and long-term customer to L-A-C, is continually looking to improve its efficiency and innovation.

The distribution hub based up in the Northwest required an upgrade to current operations. With any upgrade or new system implementation, L-A-C are always mindful to ensure that its solutions can be easily and efficiently scaled up and down upon demand, whilst being equipped with the necessary infrastructure to cope with growing volumes during longer periods of intense activity.

Project “Flyer Van Automation” required an automated transport and sortation solution to accommodate 120 van loads per day, processing the traffic via a scanning tower and automated sortation, directly onto 38 existing outfeed boom conveyors which would provide a consistent flow of around 5,000 parcels per hour.

Operators load products onto the high-speed two-tier conveyor from a dedicated loading point. The belts on infeed utilised gauge strips at 600mm pitch to provide initial gapping of product with additional gapping created on belt conveyors inside the hub prior to the induct conveyors.

Once the parcel is on the in-feeding conveyor it automatically travels into the hub and inclines up to a 5-sided camera scanning tower (with volumizing functionality) via suitably located gapping belts. If the parcel is oversized, then the system will reject the parcel (either using the sorter, if the parcels can be processed on the machine or by stopping the infeed and waiting for an operator to remove it if the parcel is over-sized). The control system identified the barcode (either 1D or 2D) and called an API to ensure the parcel is transferred to the correct destination or will revert to a local lookup table to make the routing decision.

Once the scanning system has obtained the identity and volume of the parcel, the system indexed the parcel onto the automatic sorter with the parcel then, diverted to one of the multiple destinations dependent on barcode etc. The system offered provision for rejecting parcels and the sorter continuously monitored the fill level of the destinations and reject area to ensure a continuous flow is maintained.