Intelligrated — a North American-based automated material-handling provider — was recently listed on Supply & Demand Chain Executive’s 100 great supply chain projects for its Bee Sweet Citrus design work.
Bee Sweet Citrus is an independent packer and shipper of California citrus to serve a market that stretches from Europe to Australia. Faced with rising labor costs, safety concerns, high staff turnover, and production increases, the packer needed to automate a manual palletizing process. Bee Sweet Citrus also needed a flexible palletizing setup to handle a multitude of citrus for various brands around the world, each needing different packaging, pallets, and layer patterns.
Bee Sweet partnered with Intelligrated for an integrated palletizing setup that combines leading automation and technology with a process of consistent communication thorough operational analysis and collaborative decision-making.
Bee Sweet’s new line handles 95% of Bee Sweet’s citrus varieties, with the flexibility to run 27 different stacking patterns and pallet configurations. This setup also reduced Bee Sweet’s labor requirements by 80% and helped existing employees avoid excessive lifting and twisting movements — plus reduced congested forklift traffic for higher operational efficiency and safety.
“To accommodate such complexity, we needed a multi-part system with barcode scanners, conveyor, sortation, and palletizing,” said Jim Marderosian, president, Bee Sweet Citrus. “That’s why Intelligrated’s expertise and collaboration with our team was important — to get all these moving parts on the same page. Intelligrated understood our problems and helped us boost our overall process efficiency.”
The SDCE 100 is an annual list of 100 great supply chain projects, serving as a guide for supply chain executives looking for new opportunities to drive improvement in their own operations. These projects show how supply chain setup and service providers help their customers and clients achieve excellence and prepare their operations for success.
Intelligrated of Honeywell is a single-source provider of intelligent automated material handling setups that drive fulfillment productivity for retailers, manufacturers and logistics providers around the world. Through a broad portfolio of automation equipment, software, service and support, Intelligrated setups give businesses a competitive edge and optimize operational performance through increased flexibility, efficiency and accuracy.
Intelligrated designs, manufactures, integrates and installs complete material handling automation setups including conveyor, IntelliSort sortation, Alvey palletizers and robotics, and automated storage and retrieval systems – all managed by advanced machine controls and software. Intelligrated Software offers warehouse execution systems, a scalable suite of software that manages the entire fulfillment process, including equipment, labor and business intelligence, integrated with voice- and light-directed picking and putting technologies.
From concept to integration to lifecycle support services, Intelligrated delivers dependable, sustained distribution and fulfillment success, and maximum return on investment. Intelligrated backs every project with 24X7 multilingual technical support and access to lifecycle service through a network of national, regional and local service centers. For more updates, follow the manufacturer on Twitter @Intelligrated.
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