Minimal manual handling
October 1st 2007 A £1m conveyor system that
can handle up to 1000 orders
an hour with minimal
manual handling by staff,
and which allows for future
expansion, has been
completed by European
Conveyor Systems for toy
and gift retailer Tobar.
The footprint of the
building in Beccles is 10
000m2 and its bulk storage
area alone has more than
6000 pallet spaces for the
2500 product lines currently
stocked.
Order picking tasks used
to be carried out manually at
the company's previous
premises, which involved
operatives walking long
distances. The ECS conveyor
system links a number of
picking zones on two
mezzanines with
consolidation and packing
areas on the ground floor. It
also delivers products to the
picking zones on the upper
floors to replenish stocks
there. Altogether, the system
includes almost 1000m of
conveyor.
Orders are placed in
plastic tote bins, identified
with a barcode, that are read
by barcode scanners that
direct each bin to its next
destination. Staff can add
extra bins to accommodate
an order if the first one
becomes full.
After being checked, bins
with completed correct
orders are delivered by the
conveyor system to one of
two packing areas on the
ground floor.
A re-circulation loop has
been included to provide
buffer storage when the
packing areas are busy. More articles from European Conveyor Systems Ltd: | 
