The Advantages of a Shuttle System
Pallet Shuttles play a pivotal role in automating warehouse processes and in modernizing intralogistics. These automated storage and retrieval units improve efficiency and optimize space utilization, here is how:
In combination with forklifts or automatic storage and retrieval systems (AS/RS), pallet shuttles allow for (semi-) automatic storage and retrieval in pallet warehouses. The shuttles are capable of traveling deep into storage channels, ensuring warehouse space is optimally used. This improvement also makes automation possible, significantly increasing the throughput of a warehouse, as compared to a drive-in racking system.
Pallets reach their storage location safely through careful material handling.
What is a Pallet Shuttle?
Pallet shuttles are transport vehicles used to load storage channels in a multi-deep pallet racking system.
Our specially designed truck shuttle helps distribute load carriers of any kind across the levels of an automated warehouse, and the pallet shuttle positions them within the channels. The load carriers can be moved in and out effortlessly.
Optimal space utilization is achieved by deep-lane racking, using vertical capacity of the warehouse and reducing aisle requirements.
No lanes between the individual racks are required. Using truck shuttles on multiple levels allows for a highly condensed storage system, that makes up to 95% of the storage area of the warehouse usable: our Automated Pallet Warehouse.
Thanks to the electric drives with frequency control, our pallet shuttles achieve high travel speeds.
For the process of storing or retrieving a load carrier, our pallet shuttle requires only 0.5 or 0.7 seconds per meter. The processes are fully automated. There is no need for forklifts or stacker cranes. The distribution within the lanes is taken care of by our truck shuttle system.
The shuttle systems can increase overall warehouse efficiency.
Pallet shuttle systems can significantly reduce the need for human resources in the warehouse. Trailing cables or supercapacitors help prevent fires and protect the safety of employees. Pallets toppling off a forklift are no longer an issue. The shuttles operate in an energy-efficient manner and place pallets within channels using the utmost precision, down to the millimeter.
More Storage Spaces in Total
Through the use of our pallet shuttles, you can easily achieve the same total number of storage spaces in a pallet warehouse as with other automated warehouses that use drive-in racks. Our pallet shuttle system allows for a higher utilization of available spaces, typically up to 95% occupancy. To achieve a comparable performance in an automated pallet warehouse using conventional stacker cranes, you would have to use at least two of these. Industry standard systems achieve a maximum of 60 single cycles or 80 double cycles, or 40 storage and 40 retrieval operations per hour.
Pallet Shuttles with Power Caps
Pallet shuttle systems come in a number of different variations and configurations. Depending on the application, SMB uses trailing cables or energy storage devices (capacitors) to power the shuttles. The capacitors, Power Caps, enable the Shuttles to travel cable-free on the rails of the storage-lane warehouse, and to be recharged automatically at charging stations. Depending on the storage system, pallet shuttles with power-caps can, for example, be recharged directly at the at our Truck Shuttle after their return from the storage channel.
Pallet Shuttle with Power Cables Instead of Caps
Power caps (or supercapacitors) do not pose any particular fire hazard. But in some customer applications, the use of power caps can create limitations - especially when warehouse operators need to meet high security standards or operate pallet warehouses in deep-freeze conditions. This is usually the case in pallet warehouses for food or pharmaceutical products. For many customers, therefore, we develop pallet shuttles with trailing cables, integrated into our truck shuttle system.
Scalability and Multi-Deep Pallet Storage
You can greatly increase the performance of our truck-shuttle system based on the number of deployed shuttles. While stacker cranes in the high-bay warehouse can load a maximum of two pallet spaces in a row depending on the configuration, our pallet shuttles store multiple pallets at multiple depths in a single storage channel.
Cables for Operational Safety and Fire Protection
The majority of our customers at SMB use pallet shuttles with trailing cables. Our tethered pallet shuttles are a proven advantage of our truck shuttle system, which we use to optimize our Automated Pallet Warehouse for high performance and maximum space utilization.
Positioning Different Load Carriers with Millimeter Precision
Each pallet shuttle integrated into our channel vehicle is designed for a pallet weight up to 1,500 kilograms, which means the system can handle heavy load carriers. Thanks to the position sensor used in the Automated Pallet Warehouse, our shuttles position the pallets in the storage channel with exact precision. It does not matter whether you are using European pallets, industrial pallets, chemical pallets, or mesh boxes as load carriers, or whether the pallets being stored are homogenous or mixed. Both types of storage are easily manageable with our truck shuttle system and thanks to our compatible Warehouse Management System and Material Flow Controller.
Pallet Shuttles for Cold Storage and Special Load Carriers
Every truck shuttle combines the car element and the cable-powered pallet shuttle into one compact channel vehicle. Round the clock operations are possible in an Automated Pallet Warehouse thanks to the attached cable - under deep-freeze conditions or in accordance with fire safety requirements, such as a sprinkler system
High Operational Safety by Driving Underneath the Pallets
The pallet shuttles pick up loads by moving underneath the load carrier, lifting it by its base. Additionally, the channel rails of our Automated Pallet Warehouse are equipped with rails featuring centering profiles. These two important features help ensure optimal operational safety.
Project Examples
- Raw or finished goods warehouses in factories with batch production
- Production supply
- Import and export - for example, container goods
- In parts of a warehouse for A-goods (B- and C-goods in other storage systems), packaging materials
- Quarantine, warehouse tours, provisioning
- Consolidation of external warehouses
Added Benefit:
Quickly Storing Large Batches
How does an automated warehouse with a pallet shuttle work?
This is our setup at SMB: first, the pallet is transported to the appropriate storage level using a vertical conveyor, or pallet elevator. Once it arrives, our truck with pallet shuttle takes over the load carrier from the buffer zone.
The pallet to be stored is handed over from the buffer to the truck shuttle system using a 2-track chain conveyor system - this ensures careful product handling. The truck shuttle then travels to the storage channel and deposits it there. This process can take place simultaneously on any number of storage levels at multiple depths. 25 to 35 single operations can be processed per hour per storage level.
This allows for the fast storage of large batches. A redundant storage system also ensures that pallets from the same batch are distributed over several levels, to allow for direct access.
The control software has a module to continuously monitor the inventory of all goods in storage.
Your Advantage:
Handling Different Types of Pallets
What types of load carriers can the shuttles handle?
The dimensions of our pallet shuttles are designed for standard pallets with the dimensions 1,200 x 800 mm. However, we can adapt them individually to different pallet formats.
Common formats for our shuttle include:
- Industrial pallet measuring 1,200 x 1,000 mm
- Half pallets or display pallets (DP) measuring 800x600 mm as pairs on a carrier or in-house pallet.
- Drum pallets measuring 1,200 x 1,200 mm
- Other customer-specific pallet sizes, such as those used for chemical or plastic pallets
- Intermediate Bulk Containers (IBC)
With these options, we can automate the storage of everything from standard Euro pallets to custom in-house pallets made of metal or plastic. The width of the storage channels is adjusted to optimize space utilization.
The gentle transport of the load is ensured by the support wheels on each side, which move up and down along the rail.
When engineers open our pallet shuttles for maintenance, they won't find blinking lights, but rather standard components that any trained professional can repair. If there are any questions, our service team is always available and provides on-site support.
Dipl.-Ing. Torsten Gelhaar, Project Management and Service, SMB
SMB Pallet Shuttles Have Shaped Internal Logistics For More Than 25 Years
In the early 1990s, we developed the first forklift shuttles on behalf of a leading German logistics company.
Industry insiders may still remember the forklift shuttle "DIS1" and the stacker shuttle "DIS2". Today, pallet shuttles are standard applications in many automated warehouses.
At SMB, we use pallet shuttles not in conjunction with forklifts, but for full automation in compact pallet storage.
SMB is a Pioneer of Modern Intralogistics
Over the past few decades, we have developed our shuttle technology into a cross-industry intralogistics solution.
We use this technology successfully with our vertical conveyor and rail-bound truck.
Our customers receive a fully automated high-performance channel storage system. Special-purpose machine construction with standard components, easy to maintain, and highly efficient for round-the-clock operation.
