CASE STUDY: Crossdock Sortation System

The Material Handling Problem: Touch labor associated with crossdock operation needs to be automated.

A major third party logistics company contracted with CASI to provide a crossdock sortation system with a five sided barcode scan tunnel.

The Solution: The 24 Volt MDR Conveyor with Scan Tunnel

CASI proposed a crossdock automation system consisting of 4 inbound lanes merging into a bidirectional 8 lane sortation system. All conveyor was CASI TransMaster 24 volt motorized drive roller MDR conveyor. The sortation system utilized CASI SortMaster 100 bidirectional sorters.

Turnkey System Overview

Incoming cartons are manually loaded from extendible conveyor to CASI TransMaster conveyor where all four lanes merge together.

After the cartons merge onto one lane from the four receiving docks, the cartons stage on accumulation conveyor before being transported to the five side scan tunnel.

Before the cartons enter the 5 side scan tunnel, a 9120 metering belt is used to create the necessary gap for sortation.

After proper gapping, the cartons enter the five side barcode scan tunnel where the shipping barcodes are read and a destination lane determined by the SolidRoute Software.

All conveyor control is accomplished via the CASI 1100 system controller.

The SolidRoute software allows the user to change sortation methodologies or change lanes on the fly. The embedded video capture along with Webex/Skype provide for very easy and fast remote support.

After the lanes are assigned at the scan tunnel, the carton is tracked to the appropriate lane and sorted to the correct destination. After the carton passes the divert confirmation photoeye, the carton is added to the divert statistics for that lane.

Benefits and New Efficiencies

The benefits from the new system include reduced labor and speed of processing cartons.