Scott Automation (Belgium) - Volys specialises in the production of prepared chicken and turkey products at its three sites in Belgium. To ensure growth for the coming years, Volys recently relocated a part of their activities to a new location. In collaboration with the customer, Scott designed, built and installed the internal bin transport and the palletisation.

The site in Lendelede has grown substantially, requiring the establishment of a logistics centre in Heule in 2020.

Volys chose SCOTT to install a new crate conveyor system to organise the internal transport and minimise forklift traffic in the new warehouse.

From the production site in Lendelede, the products are transported by truck to the new logistics centre in Heule. The plastic crates containing the products are stored in a refrigerated warehouse before being transferred to the order picking department.

The products from the 3 infeed lines were routed to 4 labelling and packaging lines and a crate buffering area was installed on a mezzanine floor to allow the crates to be scheduled to the labelling machines.

The SCOTT order picking software now allows the picker to retrieve all the products listed for the orders and send them (in plastic crates) to the labelling area. The crates are labelled with barcodes to ensure that the picking list, giving reference and quantity, can be followed. There are 3 crate infeed areas upstream of the product labelling area.

The cases are transported by lift from the mezzanine buffer to the labelling stations on the ground floor where the cases are presented to an operator.

After reading the barcode on the case, the operator removes all products from the cases and applies a pre-printed label.

The empty cases are transferred to a palletising area, using the same lift as the labelling area.

In the palletising area, a robot stacks the two types of empty crates on a pallet. The full pallets are automatically strapped before being sent to the forklift operators’ pick-up station for transport to the shipping area and return to the Lendelede site.

Benefits:

The new system drastically reduces the amount of fork lift traffic in the warehouse, reduces manual handling, reduces TMS for the operators and above all reduces product labelling errors with increased traceability.