-Challenge
A pharmaceutical third party logistics company was processing only 2,200 cases of drugs per day and was having difficulty tracking these incoming cases. As the company grew, they needed a more time and space efficient method of processing the cases of drugs received daily. This required a new automated system to help avoid the necessity for a new facility or dramatic remodeling while increasing daily capacity.
-Solution
Dorner Autologik worked with the pharmaceutical company to create a unique automated system to more quickly and efficiently handle the inflow of cases of pharmaceuticals. For this company, Dorner conveyors and Autologik automated systems were combined to increase processing capacity to 12,000 cases per shift, increasing system productivity over five times. The Autologik system features a unique area that allows truck drivers to unload directly onto a Dorner inclined, power belt conveyor. The system then properly spaces the packages out before sending them through a bar coding tunnel where receiving information in captured. The packages are also quickly scanned for RFID tags in the tunnel, storing this information into the tracking database for future reference. After leaving the barcode tunnel, the packages are transferred to another belt to be labeled. This label also uniquely identifies the package and stores valuable tracking information. Finally, the packages are transferred to another Dorner inclined conveyor to a cross belt sorter. The database then works with the Autologik designed system to know the belt location, contents, and destination location of each package. The cross belt sorter can then smoothly route the drug packages to their correct processing lanes. With this improved process, capacity has been increased over 500% for this pharmaceutical company and their inflow system.
