Digitizing Storage Facilities by Adding Flexibility to the Cold Chain

The consumer goods businesses are in the center of a supply chain revolution. Strategies featuring flexibility stands a chance to diversify the possibilities of cold storage facilities.

FREMONT, CA: The increasing requirement for perishable food is challenging food shippers to find adequate cold transport and storage. The facility design, location, and refrigeration systems are under higher pressure to adapt to constant changes in the marketplace, keeping operating costs in check. Rise in user curiosity in a more diverse product selection, healthy foods, and convenient meal preparation, food manufacturers, are supplying a widening array of new Stock Keeping Unit (SKU) in both chilled and frozen formats.

The cold-storage environment faces a lot of challenges. It poses challenges for food processors and retailers that endeavor to have facilities operating at a high level of efficiency. Handling deep-freezes and refrigerated preserved eatables are a complicated food distribution activity requiring management of temperatures, efficient rotation of inventory, time and lot tracking, and complete quality control.  Crane-based AS/RS solves the difficulty of gaining high-density, automated cold storage, and the difficulties associated with the product- and facility-damage resulting from manually-driven forklifts. They are invented to fit particular storage and throughput model. In case there is a needs to change to a different paradigm, the warehouse will stick to AS/RS throughput model.

The newest and more flexible tech solutions can solve high-throughput storage needs in cold storage facilities. The market sees a semi-automated, high-density storage solution for the managing goods inside channels comparable to a drive-in or pallet-flow setup.

Deep-freeze dissemination is the most energy-intensive warehousing sector, with chilled facilities. Refrigeration draw and automation energy usage are interrelated, as the heat generated from the automation must be excluded from the facility. When energy-efficient automation is executed into a cold-storage facility, the energy and cost savings potential is significant.