Modern Materials Handling: What if sensing could see inside the box?
How packaging automation can relieve bottlenecks and a new sensing technology that can see inside boxes.
Modern Materials Handling (MMH) provides comprehensive coverage of materials handling productivity solutions for professionals in distribution, warehousing and manufacturing.
The September 2021 issue of MMH featured articles around packaging and automation, including the article titled, "Packaging automation as a bottleneck buster" written by MMH Senior Editor, Roberto Michel. The full article focuses on automating packaging solutions, and how deploying automation in this area can lead to reduction of labor needed compared to manual pack out.
The article also includes a dedicated sidebar on the emerging use of 3D millimeter wave imaging as a new sensing technology. In the section, "What if sensing could see inside the box?" , ThruWave CEO Pieter Krynauw introduces 3D mmWave imaging capabilities and how the technology can be used for automated packaging line inspections.
Sept 2021 Modern Materials Handling
Click here to read the full article on MMH.com
This blog includes summary or excerpts from the article by Roberto Michel, MMH Senior Editor, titled Packaging Automation as a Bottleneck Buster.
The full article focuses on automating packaging solutions, and how deploying automation in this area can lead to reduction of labor needed compared to manual pack out. This is a timely topic, given the current state of labor shortage in many industries including manufacturing, warehousing and supply chain distribution.
The article focuses on manual pack out operational pain point needs, and opportunities where automation technologies can help. A big challenge is reducing the need for manual labor, along with requirements for reliability at high throughput. Today's packaging automation solutions seek to help alleviate manual labor while providing benefits such as optimizing package right-sizing and minimizing dim weight charges. The article includes companies such as;
Quadient,
Numina Group,
Packsize,
Sealed Air, and
ThruWave.
MMH Interview: "What if sensing could see inside the box?"
Roberto Michel of Modern Materials Handling speaks with ThruWave CEO Pieter Krynauw on the emerging technology of using 3D mmWave imaging for packaging automation. While traditional packaging automation equipment offers cubing and dimensioning equipment to collect dimensional data from external measurements, there is a new technology alternative using 3D millimeter waves developed by ThruWave that collects data from both the container and interior contents to perform a variety of automated inspection applications.
For packaging automation, ThruWave's 3D mmWave solution can perform cube utilization through sealed packages and measure how much of a package's cube is taken up by items inside, and how much is wasted space. Other automated inspection uses for 3D millimeter wave imaging include detecting anomalies through boxes to identify liquid leaks in outbound packages, verify item count or detect for damaged goods.
Below: Image of the full sidebar interview as seen in the print and digital edition of Modern Materials Handling.
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