Robotics, Sortation & Mobile Automation Integration

Three Different Technologies

Sortation moves product to the correct destination at rate. Shoe sorters handle cases and heavier items, cross-belt and tilt-tray handle mixed and smaller items at higher rates, and the choice is set by product mix and throughput rather than by preference.

Mobile automation moves product across a floor. AGVs follow a fixed guided path and are predictable. AMRs navigate a map and route around obstacles, which suits a changing floor.

Robotic cells do the handling itself: picking, palletizing, depalletizing and machine tending.

Sortation & Automated Handling

Sortation can involve conveyors, controls, sensors, palletizing, carousels and other automated-handling equipment. Steel Square can work on the equipment and the connections between systems rather than treating the automation as a standalone island.

The Island Problem

The common failure with all three technologies is not the robot. It is integration.

Automation bought as a standalone cell tends to run as an island, with product arriving by hand and leaving by hand, and the throughput on the quote never appears because the handshakes to the equipment on either side were never built. A robot cycling perfectly while an operator feeds it is an expensive operator station.

Mobile automation fails the same way for a different reason. An AMR that has to wait for a person to press a button at each end has not removed the labour, it has moved it.

Robotics & Advanced Sortation

Steel Square supports robotic cells, palletizing and depalletizing, piece handling, advanced sortation, high-density picking and goods-to-person environments. The work can include controls, material handling, equipment modifications and commissioning as needed.

What Sits Around the Automation

The cell is usually the smallest part of the project. What surrounds it is infeed and outfeed conveyor, guarding and safety interlocks, the controls integration that sequences it with the rest of the line, and the fabricated frames, transfers and access that make it fit the building.

That surrounding work is where an automation project is won or lost, and it is the work Steel Square does.

Project Experience

At Walgreens Anderson, Steel Square scope included SPS dispensing modules in the picking area and twelve cart-loading machines across upper and lower levels.