The Pallet Problem Solver: A fix for AS/RS Efficiency

Overview
A leading European ready-to-assemble furniture manufacturer was facing a critical bottleneck at its automated Maryland distribution center. The inbound entry zone feeding empty pallets into the AS/RS rack system via a stacker crane requires perfectly square, uniform pallet stacks. Yet the stacks arriving at this point were often misaligned, triggering frequent jams, elevated rejection rates, costly automation downtime, and inefficient use of labor. Seeking a reliable fix, the company engaged Cherry’s Industrial Equipment, where team members Jason Podjasek and Andrea Halloran partnered closely with the operation to assess the issue and engineer an effective solution.


The Challenge
The company operates more than three hundred retail locations worldwide, and its automated distribution process depends on efficiently receiving and unloading overseas shipments. This requires hundreds of empty pallet stacks to be injected into the system continuously and without interruption. When these stacks were not perfectly straight, they frequently jammed, creating bottlenecks and diverting pallets to a reject lane where employees had to manually restack and square them. These recurring issues increased labor demands and slowed throughput. The company sought a solution and wanted to see a strong ROI (return on investment) for whatever solution they would authorize.


The Solution
Drawing on four decades of industry expertise and extensive discovery discussions, Cherry’s team recommended integrating an automatic pallet straightener to eliminate the bottlenecks caused by inconsistently stacked pallets. However, tying directly into the automated system was not feasible, so the decision was made to deploy a standalone machine that could square pallets offline and then reintroduce them back into the line.
The LS-90 pallet straightener was the ideal foundation, but it required customization to accommodate the European full- and half-size pallets used throughout the Maryland facility. Collaborating with the manufacturer’s automation engineering team, Cherry’s modified the design—reducing the overall height to just under 90 inches, increasing capacity to fifteen pallets, and designing a squaring mechanism capable of handling the smaller pallet dimensions.
The result: a customized, standalone LS-90 straightener tailored to the client’s unique pallet sizes and engineered to deliver a smoother, more reliable pallet flow back into the automated system.


The Results
The client has experienced very positive results with the implementation of the customized LS-90 pallet straightener.
 
In service for several months, productivity losses have reduced greatly. Faults at the area of the conveyor where pallets jammed have been cut by more than half, freeing up employees to concentrate on other tasks. The flow of goods into the system has increased.
Management undertook a cost analysis to determine the feasibility of future acquisitions, seeking to find a ROI (return on investment) that would justify additional purchases. The company’s benchmark of a good ROI on equipment investment is seven years. The analysis projects that ROI on the LS-90 would be achieved in slightly over one year. Accordingly, the company placed a second order and is considering two more for a distribution center in California.


Conclusion
Understanding that no two manufacturing facilities have the same specific needs, the way to arrive at a solution that truly works begins with conducting extensive discovery sessions to uncover the the client’s true “pain points.” In this case, a traditional pallet straightener without modification would not have yielded the results that the client sought. But by understanding the client’s needs and working collaboratively with the engineering team, Cherry’s was able to deliver a solution that can serve as a prototype for the company’s other facilities nationally and even globally.