Daifuku, Qubiqa team up on material handling project

Farmington Hills, MI: Material handling solutions provider Daifuku America Corporation will work with Qubiqa to provide an automated layer-handling project for a Fortune 500 food manufacturer. The project will feature Daifuku America’s Unit Load automated storage and retrieval system (AS/RS) cranes feeding pallets to a Qubiqa Flex-R Layer Picker. The Flex-R Layer Picker then automatically builds customer order pallets. Daifuku America said the new system will significantly reduce order fulfillment costs and time.

“The economics and automated layer handling technology are working now more than ever in the North American market,” said Thorben Larsen, Qubiqa’s global product manager for the Layer Picker. “This represents Qubiqa’s third rainbow pallet building project in North America with several more on the horizon.”

The system includes Daifuku’s SAP warehouse management system (WMS) interface, two aisles of  Unit Load AS/RS, a robot-mounted Qubiqa Flex-R Layer Picker, an automatic multi-level label application, an integrated stretch wrap system and “voice order” system for manual case picking.

“This automated system represents the perfect marriage of leading edge material handling and control technologies,” said Nobo Morita, president of Daifuku America Corporation. “The system handles 600-plus SKUs and reduces the time required to assemble layer and case pick orders by 30 percent. With its outstanding ROI, we expect our automated layer pick systems will be the wave of the future.”