Coca-Cola had to overcome a crucial challenge with regard to speed and safety during the loading process. Pallets with drinks are packed and labelled with a barcode onto a conveyor belt. Sixteen forklifts drive back and forth to collect the pallets and load them onto the correct lorry. The forklifts were able to load up to three pallets, but could only scan two of these. If a third pallet was picked up, the driver had to get out of the forklift and scan it manually using a hand-held scanner. As this led to time loss and dangerous situations, the automated scanning process required a new solution.
Coca-Cola looked for new forklifts that were able to carry more pallets and also had the ability to scan them automatically. Zetes developed a scanning system and equipped each forklift with three moveable, very robust scanners and sensors to the front. The scanners are able to read the labels on the pallets directly when driving up to them, they can read both horizontally and vertically. The forklift driver is then sent a message with the number of the lorry onto which the pallets must be loaded. All data is automatically forwarded to the SAP system using the application developed by Zetes.
Kees Kroes, Logistics Warehouse Transport Manager at Coca-Cola Enterprises Netherlands, explains the advantages of this system: “The scanners can now read the labels regardless of their position on the pallet, the accuracy has improved from 98% to 99.9%. Furthermore, thanks to the installation of the automatic scanners and sensors, the loading process has been considerably faster, knocking off 6 minutes per lorry. The safety of the loading process, as a major priority, has also improved. When loading three pallets, the driver of the forklift no longer has to get out to scan the third pallet manually. The risk of accidents has therefore been reduced to an absolute minimum.”
