Unloading Light Boxes with Destuff-it™

Background

A large discount retailer receives multiple floor loaded container loads per day with cardboard boxes destined for one of their 1,095 stores. Each container has a mixed load of SKUs with the average SKU count per container at 16. Workers manually hand stack pallets with boxes inside the container, then move them onto the dock with hand pallet jacks to be stretch wrapped and put away on racking by a forklift truck. Although the boxes are relatively light (under 5 pounds), there are as many as 8,000 boxes in each container, making the job physically demanding and leading to high turnover of the personnel assigned to this task.

The Solution

The Destuff-it™ machine allows for one worker to be located in the container transferring boxes onto the pivoting belt conveyor while the other workers are able to spread out on the dock floor for sorting and manual palletizing of the boxes. Due to the light weight and small size of the boxes, each worker is able to transfer multiple boxes at a time. During a timed trial on site, the workers were able to achieve a case rate of 3,600 boxes per hour including stretch wrapping and distributing.