Critical.
Authoritative.
Strategic.
Subscribe to CIO Magazine »

Smart robot picks up three logistics awards for Nestlé Australia

Dematic integrates world-first supply chain management solution
Nestlé's robotic layer picker

Nestlé's robotic layer picker

Smart robotic technology has helped Nestlé overcome the occupational health and safety issues of manually handing about four million cases of products in its consumer food and beverage, food service and pet food businesses.

The innovative robotic layer picking system received recognition at the recent 2011 Australian Supply Chain and Logistics Awards in Perth. Located at Nestlé’s Arndell Park national distribution centre in Sydney’s western suburbs, the system was integrated by Dematic and has been hailed as a world-first project in supply chain management.

The 80/20 rule

Nestlé’s distribution centre stores and distributes several hundred products from the organisation’s consumer food and beverage, food service and pet food businesses. The company distributes about 80 per cent of orders as full pallets, but the remaining 20 per cent come in pallet layer and full case quantities. In the past, this has meant a lot of manual handing — about five million cases per year. The new robotic solution eliminates most of that.

The system comprises a four-axis robotic layer that is equipped with dual bellows and a vacuum-gripping head capable of handling packaging types such as cartons, bags and bottled beverages.

Nestlé’s SAP warehouse management system downloads orders into Dematic’s PickDirector warehouse control system to initiate picking. In turn, PickDirector interfaces with Dematic’s FreePick Maximiser software to order the stock in the right sequence to fulfil the next wave of orders.

As new pallets of stock are fed into the system, the layer picker selects the required layers and transfers the stock to one of four customer order pallets. Any stock remaining on a pallet either forms the basis for another order via the system’s FreePick Maximiser software, or is returned to the adjacent reserve storage bays for use at a later stage.

Completed orders are checked for weight then stretch-wrapped and labelled, ready for collection and transport to despatch by forklift. Orders that require individual case picks to be added to the layers exit the system, where the distribution centre’s new voice picking system completes the process.

The FreePick Maximiser software can cross-match orders and pair them with compatible order profiles. It means up to 50 per cent of goods don’t have to be physically picked, although throughput is generally about 20 per cent.

Other winners at the 2011 Australian Supply Chain and Logistics Awards:

  • University of Wollongong - Sydney Business School won the Australian Training, Education & Development Award
  • Waste Contractors and Recyclers Association of Queensland (WCRAQ) won the Australian Environmental Excellence Award
  • Rick Ralph won the Australian Industry Excellence Award
  • Amy Vassallo took out the Australian Future Leaders Award.

Follow Georgina Swan on Twitter: @swandives

Follow Georgina Swan on Google+

Join the CIO Australia group on LinkedIn. The group is open to CIOs, IT Directors, COOs, CTOs and senior IT managers.

More about: Dematic, Google, Maximiser, Nestlé, SAP, Smart, University of Wollongong, University of Wollongong
References show all

Comments

Post new comment

The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.
Users posting comments agree to the CIO comments policy.
Login or register to link comments to your user profile, or you may also post a comment without being logged in.
Related Coverage
Related Whitepapers
Latest Stories
Community Comments
Tags: Dematic, logistics, Nestle, supply chain management
Latest Blog Posts
Whitepapers
  • EMC 15-Minute Guide to Smarter Backup Transform your future
    Backup and recovery has become fundamental part of business and an essential element of information management. Information is useless to customers, employees, or business partners can't access it when it is needed. Availability and integrity of information, of the lack of, can directly impact revenues and profits - as well as company reputations. Read more.
    Learn more »
  • HTML5 and security on the new web
    There are lots of changes happening to the key technologies that power the web. The new version of HTML, the dominant web language, offers impressive enhancements for rich web applications. But as HTML5 comes into greater use we’ll see new security issues arise. It’s typical for a new technology to have defects and pitfalls. And although the standard is still being defined, it's already being implemented. So how does HTML5 stand up to security scrutiny?
    Learn more »
  • Seven Tips for Securing Mobile Workers
    Seven Tips for Securing Mobile Workers is intended to offer practical guidance on dealing with one of the fastest growing threats to the security of sensitive and confidential information.
    Learn more »
All whitepapers
rhs_login_lockGet exclusive access to Invitation only events CIO, reports & analysis.