The dispatch of loose cardboard boxes is laborious manual work. This is still the current standard even with innovative internet traders – except with the APO discounter in Markkleeberg. Since August 2009, a robot system supplied by ThyssenKrupp Krause loads cartons in DHL roll containers.
The Bremen company, known as worldwide engineering specialist and supplier of turn-key assembly and test systems for the production of automobile powertrain units, provided a customized and economic solution for the APO discounter.
Around 1 million cartons a year are dispatched from the warehouse in Markkleeberg. After receipt of the online order, the articles are prepared and packaged for dispatch in a fully automated process. The range of goods of APO Discounter currently comprises approximately 250,000 articles, which are retailed to private customers as well as to pharmacies all over Europe and Asia.
The company dispatches the goods in two standard box sizes. The cartons are prepared and packaged fully automatic and placed on a conveyor belt. Up to 1,000 assorted cartons per hour are picked by the 5-axis articulated arm robot of ThyssenKrupp Krause. The adjustable multiple gripper picks up the cartons and loads them into roll containers.
The system was developed in cooperation with the BIBA institute of the Bremen University. The BIBA is an engineering science research institute that mainly focuses on the technical and organizational requirements of production and logistic systems. It studies and develops technical and organizational solutions and implements them in companies of all industries, sizes and nationalities in step with actual practice.
"We focus on standardized solutions that fit in the customer's process", says Moritz Rohde, research associate responsible for the design and the loading process, "this led to a highly efficient and economic solution."
„With the loading system we have closed another gap in the process chain“, says Johannes Rothe, head of engineering at APO.
For the next step into future the ParcelRobot of ThyssenKrupp Krause offers the possibility of direct loading and unloading of containers and swap bodies.