Pallet picking is a continuous challenge as each year, it seems, marketing creates more items while customers, seeking to manage their inventories, want smaller quantities of each item. This necessitates the break down of unit loads and construction of mixed-case picked pallets.

There are several techniques used to create mixed-case pallet loads. In Part one, we are going to look at the first three, and examine, the pros and cons of each as well as the investment required, and how this impacts flexibility and labor costs.

1. The first method is pallet picking to pallet jack or forklift. This method is often used in grocery warehouses and other sites with large numbers of items. The picker goes to the items that are spread throughout the warehouse according to some sequence. While high labor content is a factor, it is a very flexible system. It is low dollar investment and has unlimited SKU potential. Because of this, we rate the pros and cons as: low cost for grocery store type application; enables good pallet-building if that person is skilled or a system exists; but through-put is limited only by the number of people operating the equipment.

2. Our second system is pick to belt pallet picking. A person, a robot, or a palletizer can handle this. It is simple in concept. As the picker gathers the cases, he places them on a conveyor belt. At the other end of the conveyor, somebody takes them off and stacks them onto a pallet. This is a moderate cost and a low labor system. It is only moderately flexible but it can handle a large number of SKU's. Biggest disadvantages are possible shipping damage that can occur at any point along the way because of poor pallet construction and the requirement for a minimum number of people to operate the system.

3. Our third system is called pick-to-belt plus automated palletization pallet stacking. It is very similar to number 2, except it uses an extra level of sorting, pallet planning and robots to do the stacking. That cuts down on the incidence of damage to the items being shipped. This requires a higher labor cost because while unskilled labor can be used for some of the heavy lifting onto the conveyor belt, the robots require skilled technicians to maintain them. They can sort the boxes into a more efficient arrangement where they align more precisely on the pallet. The pros and cons: requires skilled technicians; robots offer more flexibility; better cube utilization; and lower incidents of damage.

In part 2, we will look at the remaining 3 major ways challenging the industry in the area of pallet picking as we continuously seek better ways to provide the lowest total supply chain cost, not just minimizing transportation or warehousing costs.

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