Aerial vision – E-Commerce and order management
Sorter solution for the automatic sorting of glasses
LCS creates an automatic sorting line for eyewear for Aerial Vision. An efficient solution that ensures high performance and maximum traceability of all items.
The Company and its needs:
Aerial Vision International is a specialized company in the wholesale and import-export of optical items. In the distribution center located near Rome, Aerial Vision manages the sorting of glasses packed in different packages and destined for the warehouse, for sale through e-commerce or for shipment to customers.
Aerial Vision’s objective was to implement an automatic sorting solution to support the activities of both the loading of goods into the system in the incoming flow and of checking the outgoing material.
The activities were carried out entirely in manual mode, the task of the operators was to check the individual items and sort them into the appropriate boxes based on the indications from the ERP.
LCS was therefore entrusted with the task of developing a solution that would make sorting operations more efficient, guaranteeing the traceability of the items with the consequent elimination of any errors caused by manual management.
3 processes to be optimized through an automatic system
- Entrance management
- Management of goods for shipment according to different criteria such as dropoff or groupage
- Inventory
The project
The project developed and implemented by LCS had a sorter for sorting the glasses packed in different packages, all equipped with a label with an identifying barcode.
The operator has the task to select, on the appropriate panel, the function that the sorter will have to perform between managing goods in the warehouse, sorting goods for shipment, inventory.
The loading of the products is then carried out manually by the operators near the reference silk-screened elements present on the conveyor belt of the sorter and the sorting takes place automatically on 51 chutes.
The materials positioned on the conveyor belt are identified individually by the LCS system with the aid of a portal of 1D and 2D barcode readers, for the correct sorting towards a specific chute, corresponding in turn to a specific destination: shelf cell, point of sale, courier etc.
The sorting of the products towards the 51 outlets takes place by means of pneumatic pushers which have the task of diverting towards gravity chutes. Containers for the collection of sorted items are placed under the chutes.
At the bottom of the line there is an exit in which the materials that have had identification problems (no reads, various exceptions) are conveyed.
All the operations described take place under the guidance of the LCS LogiCon control and supervision software, in direct connection with the Aerial Vision ERP system. The customer’s company management system communicates the product data in the warehouse to LogiCon, then the LCS software determines the sorting of the items in the different bays according to the parameters set by the operator. By activating the desired processing lists, in fact, the LCS sorter is able to sort the packages in accordinf to the type of product and the sorting logic set (entry, shipment, inventory).
Once the sorting has taken place, the operator closes the activated list and the management system receives the information of the sorting carried out: number of leading unit and related articles. Subsequently, the goods are transferred manually to warehouse locations or to the shipping department.
Benefits obtained
The solution designed and installed by LCS made it possible to increase the efficiency of sorting operations, ensuring high performance. The maximum productivity of the sorter is in fact 3600 items / hour or one package per second.
Furthermore, the solution is highly flexible as it is able to handle packages of different sizes and types of packaging such as plastic bags, boxes, envelopes, etc.
In particular, the solution created by LCS has:
- Improved item sorting performance
- Reduced lead-time
- Guaranteed maximum traceability of individual items
- Eliminated the errors connected to the manual management of the sorting operations