Industry’s First Voice Directed Vertical Storage Units for Picking Automation

Numina Group and Ferretto Group announced a partnership combining their 150 plus engineering team to support the design and sales of Ferretto’s Automated Storage and Retrieval Systems, AS/RS, Mini-load, Vertical Lift Modules (VLM), and Vertical Carousels (VC) throughout North America.

The addition of the automated picking and storage technologies to Numina Group’s product line provides more flexible, cost effective automation choices to clients for improving order fulfillment and distribution operations.

The latest generation VLM from Ferretto Group, the Vertimag™, is a tier 1 VLM platform. The system is based on a modular design and can be scaled to a customer’s specific size requirement, utilizing the entire vertical height of a building. Numina Group’s RDS™ Voice Picking coupled with Ferretto’ s VLM combines two highly efficient and robust technologies into a single process; delivering faster product picking/retrieval with improved DC operation storage density.

The Vertimag™ is considered one of the most robust VLM units on the market today. Eliminating service calls and reducing maintenance to a minimum was a design objective incorporated from the early stages of the VLM design. Vertimag™ technical features increase both shelf/tray size and load capacity with significantly higher storage and retrieval cycles while maintaining stated speed at full load capacity.

The design allows heights of the VLM to go beyond 50’ with mechanically transportable storage shelves/trays ranging in size up to 13’L x 3’ deep with weight capacity of up to 2204 LBS. This provides storage density of more than 30% SKU capacity in as little as 200 square feet of floor space. “The higher storage capacity and speed of the Vertimag™ VLM increases picking efficiency and reduces replenishment cycles to shorten the ROI time” stated Rami Ghandour, Ferretto North America Business Development Manager.

“Additionally, off-the-shelf Ethernet PLC controls and electro mechanical components are used for the control system. The components are available at hundreds of North American distributors to eliminate stocking of costly proprietary parts and allow customers to readily source spares and perform in-house maintenance increasing reliability and lowering the cost of ownership” stated Ghandour.

Ferretto Group’s Vertimag™ vertical storage and retrieval units provide fast, efficient goods-to-person picking. The VLM’s can be used stand-alone for parts and kitting in manufacturing and distribution, in a pod array of two or more synchronized units or in a hybrid design combining the dense VLM automated storage and retrieval technology within a traditional pick module . The hybrid design provides cost, space and labor savings for both new and existing order fulfillment operations.

“Our hybrid pick module design incorporates the right storage techniques and technologies to improve floor space usage by 65% and lower picking labor by eliminating workers’ walk time. A unique Vertimag™ feature Numina has taken advantage of is the dual shelf pick queueing which places the next required pick in a ready to use position to increase the speed of product movement in goods-to-person picking by 30 to 50%”, stated Dan Hanrahan president of The Numina Group.

“Further savings result in order fulfillment solutions when we combine pallet, carton flow, shelves and vertical storage in the pick module based on the SKU velocity movement. In many DC applications, the blended, hybrid design has a superior ROI compared to a mini-load tote based storage and retrieval picking system” explained Hanrahan.

Numina Group’s Tier One WCS, RDS™,Real-time Distribution System manages the entire order fulfillment operation. Solutions can be deployed in a highly modular pick, pack, and ship system to provide clients an entire order fulfillment automated distribution operation. RDS™ includes software modules to manage order release and work balancing using lean design practices with voice directed work activities for order picking, lot and serial ID barcode or RFID track and trace and conveyor systems with in-line scale, print and apply labeling and packing and shipping sorters; providing a turn-key order fulfillment solution.

Vertimag with Voice produces 50% productivity improvement versus shelf picking with 99.9% picking accuracy.

Ferretto Group demonstrated Vertimag VLM performance gains using multi-modal voice directed picking and hands free 2-D barcode scanning for SKU and lot code validation at Promat 2015. Additionally featured at their booth (4709) was an array of products including their family of ASRS, Mini-load storage retrieval and modular rack, shelf and storage mezzanines.