By
Bob Trebilcock
April 19, 2021
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Mount Adams Fruit
Bingen, Washington
Mount Adams Fruit’s new, highly automated distribution center is essentially a finished-goods warehouse. In this instance, the automated warehouse receives and stores fresh fruit. Handling begins in the processing area (not shown). Prior to fruit arriving at Mount Adams Fruit from the fields, an estimate of what will arrive is entered into Salesforce.com, which is used for production planning. Fruit arrives from the fields in bins that are stored in temperature-controlled rooms that control ripening until fruit is ready to be packed.
Once the fruit is ready to be packed, it is cleaned in water, dried and conveyed to a defect sorter, which includes a vision system that can evaluate the fruit internally and externally. Mount Adams Fruit uses artificial intelligence (AI) to determine what kind of box the fruit will go into based on grading and size.
Once the fruit is cleared for packing, it is packed by hand into shipping boxes. Packed boxes are conveyed to an automatic stamping line that creates a unique identifier for that box. The license plate code identifies the farmer, the lot, the pack date, the grade, size, packing style and pallet. That information is entered into Salesforce.com and the product is ready for storage and available for sales.
Once boxes have been packed, they are conveyed to the floor level where they are prepped for putaway into the automated storage and retrieval system (1). Adjacent to the AS/RS is a second quality control area (2), where stored fruit that requires another review, and potentially a repack, is inspected.
A majority of boxes will be palletized by a module with six robotic palletizers (3). A second palletizing area (4) is used to manually build pallets. Once a pallet has been built, it is conveyed to an automatic stretch-wrapping area (5). There, a protective corner board is automatically applied before the pallet is stretch-wrapped and tagged with an identification label.
After a pallet is wrapped and ready for storage, it is conveyed to a profile station that determines the height of the pallet– the AS/RS features four levels that store pallets that are 96 inches high or less and three levels that store pallets that are 72 inches or less. Pallets are now ready for induction into the AS/RS.
There are four induction stations. Lift trucks deliver pallets to an area designated for partial and miscellaneous pallets (6). A second induction area receives inbound apples (7). Those pallets are delivered to the AS/RS by a transfer car (8). A third area receives inbound pears (9). Lift trucks deliver pallets to the fourth area (10), which has 22 pallet positions.
Once a pallet is conveyed into the AS/RS, it is picked up by an automatic pallet shuttle, or rover. The shuttles can move in all directions on a given level. Pallets that are stored on the floor level are delivered to a storage location that is tracked in the warehouse management system. Pallets that will be stored on one of the six upper levels are delivered to one of three vertical reciprocating conveyors (11). When the conveyor reaches the right level for that pallet, it’s picked up by a pallet shuttle and putaway into a storage location.
Further handling: After storage, fruit may be retrieved for repacking: For example, some fruit may be repacked into bags for easy handling in a store. Or, it may be re-inspected and re-packed to ensure quality. Finally, once there is an order for a pallet, it is retrieved and delivered to the shipping area (12), where it is staged on pallet conveyor for loading.
Bob Trebilcock was the executive editor for Modern Materials Handling and an editorial advisor to Supply Chain Management Review. He has covered materials handling, technology, logistics, and supply chain topics for nearly 30 years. He is a graduate of Bowling Green State University. He retired in 202 but serves as a consultant to Modern and Peerless Media.
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