June 17, 2024
Mastering the "Tetris" of Palletizing
Equans Digital’s innovation to reduce physical strain and the carbon footprint
All the products we consume pass through them—what are they? Pallets! This assembly of wooden planks facilitates the storage and transport of goods. However, today, trucks travel with an average of 30% empty space. Manufacturers must therefore optimize the palletization of their production to avoid this situation. Equans Digital, an Equans subsidiary specializing in ICT and digital solutions, has used its expertise to automate the assembly of pallets containing packages of various sizes in order to reduce physical strain, optimize production, and improve the carbon footprint of transportation.
Avoiding environmental nonsense and energy waste
Today, manufacturers and logistics professionals face significant challenges in automating and optimizing palletizing when packages come in different sizes. Some operators opt for a variety of formats that require significant human intervention, while others automate palletizing but end up with a heterogeneous mix that is difficult to manage. In short, manufacturers have now found ways to package products in appropriately sized boxes. But this process shifts the problem to palletizing, where the heterogeneous nature of the load is difficult to manage.
While the data is complex to measure, it is estimated that, on average, 30% of the space in freight transport is empty. And in the case of restocking—which often involves small-volume packages—or deliveries to individuals, this can reach 80% of a truck’s usable volume. While it will never be possible to achieve “zero empty space,” getting closer to that goal would generate significant CO2 emissions savings and accelerate the transition to carbon neutrality.
Innovating to Meet an Industrial Challenge
Logistics professionals are experts at managing uniform formats. The challenge of mixed-load palletizing, on the other hand, is to create customized solutions. The teams at Equans Digital have developed a robotic solution that incorporates an algorithmic module to replace manual palletizing. First, the algorithm performs a calculation based on business rules: orientable packages, weight, fragility, pallet dimensions, maximum height, etc. A palletizing plan is generated and sent to the robotic system, which will assemble the pallet and tackle the “Tetris”-like challenge of arranging the packages!
These rules are configured according to each manufacturer’s specific needs. Through its interfaces, the algorithm draws on either customer data (ERP) or real-time information from sensors (measurement, weighing, dimensional scanning, label readers, etc.) to generate palletizing plans on demand. Automating the palletizing of mixed-size packages reduces the physical strain of the work, optimizes production, and improves the carbon footprint of transportation.
Sokoa, at the forefront of palletizing
Sokoa, a French manufacturer of chairs and seating solutions for professional spaces based in Hendaye, adopted mixed-product palletizing last March. In just three months, the robotic solution implemented by Equans Digital produced 6,200 pallets consisting of more than 34,000 packages, with an average of 800 to 900 packages processed per day. The goal now is to reach 1,200 to 1,400 packages per day by the end of July.
Mixed-product palletizing offers numerous benefits for Sokoa. Above all, working conditions for employees in the shipping department have improved significantly. Today, more than 70 to 80 percent of packages are handled automatically by the robot, thereby improving the daily work lives of Sokoa’s eight employees, who previously had to handle 15 to 20 metric tons of packages per day. The quality of palletizing has also been a major advantage, as the rate of disputes related to packaging, palletizing, and transportation previously accounted for about 15% of after-sales service costs—a factor that had negatively impacted Sokoa’s reputation among its customers.
Just a few months after implementing the Equans Digital solution, the initial feedback has been very promising, both from our customers and our employees. This innovation has led to a significant improvement in working conditions as well as in the quality of the final product. No more worries about excess packages to handle, no more repalletizing en route to optimize space in the trucks—our pallets arrive at our customers’ locations exactly as they were when they left the factory! As for the targeted 10–15% reduction in the number of trucks, the impact is still difficult to measure at this time but should become clearer in the coming months, explains Nicolas Charrier, Plant and Production Director at Sokoa.
By offering manufacturers a customized solution to optimize the palletization of their production and reduce empty space in freight transport, Equans Digital is making a much-needed and practical contribution. It is by combining our expertise and know-how that we can design and develop innovations that enhance energy efficiency and promote the decarbonization of industrial activities. “We have significant growth prospects, both in France and internationally,” says Jean-Dominique Rousseau, Director of the Robotics Division at Equans Digital.
