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PaLA Palletized Loads Automatic Loading System for unmodified European Trailers to enable a Resilient Supply Chain The manufacturing facilities in Europe are mostly fully automated with minimum touch on pallets from production all the way up to the docks but the last mile of action, i.e. loading operation remains fully manual with no flexibility to decide on how to execute this task (automated or manual). This makes it a weak link in the supply chain, which is prone to disruption (especially as learnt in COVID pandemic situation) as it is fully dependent on human presence to execute a labor intensive and less ergonomic task. Hence true supply chain resilience cannot be achieved until there is a solution developed to automatically load palletized goods with on the road (un-modified) European trailers. The main reason why this task is still conducted manually is the non-standard trailer fleet in Europe and the lack of no automatic solution available for curtain trailers. Given that curtain trailers comprise at least 80% of on the road trailers there is a huge opportunity with high scalability for a solution. However, currently existing solutions for automatic loading of pallets only work for loading rigid-walled trucks, which are characterized by rigid, nondeformed walls. In contrast, for loading of curtain trailers, such systems fail due to the varying conditions of curtain trailers and less defined walls resulting in these systems to crash into obstacles like carrier beams causing damaged loads or resulting in emergency stops. Consequently, this activity aims to enable an existing automatic loading solution (Nalon) of the company Duro Felguera to tackle the challenges associated with automatically loading curtain trailers from the rear side. Contact persons: L. Rolfs   (Project manager)D. Niermann B. Vur Funded by: EU - EIT Manufacturing Duration: 01.01.2022 - 31.12.2022 See project's publications List all projects |
