Getting non-conveyables under control

My buddy.” That’s what Bryan Jensen calls the suit of armor standing in his front hallway.

But back in the warehouse where the armor stood before it got to Jensen, it was more likely known as a non-conveyable. And as everyone knows, non-conveyables are no one’s buddy.

In fact, the pain of handling them has a broad reach. It includes items so small they pass undetected under photoeyes or other sensors. It also includes items too heavy or too irregularly shaped or too long to move easily on a conveyor.

Quite simply, non-conveyables are anything that can’t be moved or handled like most everything else in a warehouse or DC. Jensen, chairman and executive vice president at St. Onge, says the rule of thumb for the size of a conveyable item, assuming a 30-inch wide conveyor, is 30 x 31 x 39 inches. Everything else is circumspect.

Bruce Bleikamp, director of product management at MHS, estimates that only about 2% of the SKUs in a typical DC are non-conveyable. But as Jensen points out, that number can run as high as 15% or 20%. And then, he adds, there are appliance warehouses where an even higher percentage of SKUs require special handling with a clamp truck or other device. The same would be true at a furniture warehouse.

As you already suspect, that means there are no standard solutions to moving and tracking non-conveyables. And while there is no cookie cutter solution here, this is not an impossible task.

Getting a grip

There’s the old story about the product design engineers who throw their latest creation over the wall with a dare to manufacturing of “make it if you can.” And there are probably days when handling even a small number of non-conveyables in a DC has much the same feel.

“We can convey large product, but it might be very costly,” says Jensen. “So the question becomes: Is there enough volume to justify the expense of the selected solution?” And even if the justification is dicey at best, managing non-conveyables that complete a company’s product line becomes just the cost of doing business.

Despite their outlier size and resulting intimidation factor, non-conveyables should not intimidate, explains Jeremy Davidson, vice president of enterprise accounts at Fortna.

“The shiny penny syndrome of warehousing is to throw automation at a process and it will suddenly work,” he says. “However, the solve here is actually more difficult and complex than thinking automation is obviously the answer,” continues Davidson.

As Jensen put it, “the more exceptional a non-conveyable is, the less likely that automation will solve it. And the flip side is also true.”

But rather than starting with to automate or not, the better starting place is: “How can we make this work?’” continues Davidson.

As becomes readily apparent, non-conveyables require a highly integrated solution. There’s more here than just handling the items. There’s also the matter of storing and transporting them as well as being in sync with the movement of standard goods in the facility.

It’s worth noting that even the packaging of a non-conveyable has an impact on the solution. For instance, an appliance is most likely in a carton while upholstered furniture is probably wrapped in plastic. That means a carton clamp may handle a refrigerator, but do substantial damage to a sofa, which is better moved on the extended tines of a lift truck.

Then there’s the matter of the consolidation area, says Davidson. That’s where conveyables and non-conveyables have to merge relatively seamlessly to ensure on-time shipments and uncongested dock areas.

“This requires a thorough understanding of the product types and coordinating their flow through the facility at the right pace,” explains Jared Green, general manager of sales for automation and emerging technologies at Crown Equipment. That isn’t always easy because non-conveyables are typically not scanned or tracked as frequently as conveyables. “You really have to understand your operations and processes to effectively manage non-conveyables in a DC,” says Green.

Some options

That process is manageable, says Bleikamp of MHS. He recommends operations take an inventory of non-conveyable items, identify all key workflows and determine associated labor requirements. That information sets a baseline to help determine the right handling process and technology to move non-conveyables.

In fact, several different automated and non-automated components may be needed to handle these items from receiving to shipping.

In storage, for instance, the solution could range from push-back to cantilever rack. An automated storage and retrieval system might even work. “The trick is to combine ease of putaway and retrieval with the highest storage density,” says Davidson.

Ease of access and footprint requirements also apply to the movement of non-conveyables from storage to staging and consolidation areas. Quite simply, these items should not require more resources ranging from labor and square footage to ease of movement than absolutely necessary.

And while the natural line of sight here is to focus on materials handling equipment, process control is critical, too. Just like everything else in the DC, non-conveyables must be tracked and coordinated with other items in a customer order. Solutions range from warehouse management systems (WMS) to photoeyes, scanners and portable terminals and tablets.

Green tells the story of a company looking for a solution to handle non-conveyables, which accounted for up to 30% of its total volume across multiple operations. While other material movement in the facility had been highly automated, non-conveyables still required a significant amount of manual intervention, using resources that could be reallocated to higher value tasks.

Like everything else, non-conveyable handling should always require the least amount of resources, especially during movement throughout the DC.

The solution was the implementation of a dual-mode tow tractor and cart system teamed with process optimization. The dual-mode tow tractor can be operated autonomously or manually as needed.

The carts being pulled are known as mother-daughter carts. The mother cart frame remains in place behind the tow tractor while the daughter cart is mated or removed to pick up or drop off a load of non-conveyable items.

In automated mode, daughter carts are loaded and unloaded at programmed pick-up/drop-off points throughout the facility. Once the daughter cart is mated to or removed from the mother cart frame, the tow tractor resumes its travel to the next stop. A loader directs the tow tractor to a designated location in the operation while it uses multiple forms of navigation to travel along its programmed path.

The dual-mode aspect of the tow tractor and cart system strikes at the heart of equipment selection here. As Davidson said earlier, automation may not always be the best answer.

However, dual-mode systems enable an operation to introduce automation into each process in a logical and controlled manner and scale it when and where it makes sense. Current labor challenges and the desire to optimize labor as much as possible in DCs will inevitably bring automation into the discussion.

Right now, there is clearly a fascination with autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) for movement of non-conveyables. While applications are tough to find, the idea is certainly appealing for several reasons, says Bleikamp.

To begin, AMRs are, as their name says, autonomous. That provides maximum flexibility to both establish paths and set new ones. And unlike conveyor, AMRs are not fixed, eliminating fixed barriers and structures that could interfere with the movement of goods in the facility. Bleikamp continues on to say AMRs can be automatically loaded and unloaded.

In addition, says Davidson, AMRs can bring items to an individual or the person can follow the AMR to perform tasks along the way. “The real value of AMRs for non-conveyables,” says Davidson, “is that they are consistent, reliable and predictable. And those three are in sharp contrast to people’s inconsistencies.” In the world of tough-to-handle items, those three characteristics are highly valuable assets.

Many times, automated sorting of non-conveyables is out of the question. However, Fives Intralogistics recently introduced an automated sortation system specifically for oversized and irregularly shaped products that measure up to 9 feet in length and weigh more than 175 pounds. By using this solution, “safety can increase considerably and labor costs reduced by up to 50%,” says a company spokesman.

But according to Davidson, the real magic happens in consolidation. This is where non-conveyables merge with everything else in an order. “The most successful systems here are pull based rather than push based,” he says. “This approach increases throughput 20% to 50% because constraints are not being introduced to the order build. It’s all a matter of managing the order,” adds Davidson.

Making it all work

Two of the more notably successful companies at non-conveyable handling are retailer Canadian Tire (See Modern, January 2019) and GE Appliances (See Modern, November 2019).

The big shift at Canadian Tire was moving from manual handling of 20,000 tires a day to a gantry robotic system. The idea was to remove as much labor as possible because handling tires is highly physical and difficult.

The new system required considerable software development to coordinate identification of required tires for an order and handling of them by the robotic system, which places them on a cart for movement to the shipping area.

Over at GE Appliances, the non-conveyable solution is another story featuring lift trucks with carton clamps. But behind the scenes, a WMS is managing movement of appliances based on their expected shipment date.

Meanwhile, backup cameras and sensors on the clamp attachment aid lift truck operators in the efficient but gentle handling of appliances. Laser-guided site lines assist operators as they move and store product.

Clearly, there is an art to handling and managing non-conveyables. But given the thought, attention and resources needed, these hard-to-handle items can be just as mainstream as any standard sized carton in a DC.