An intelligent alternative
June 1st 2011 BITO's PROmotion Shuttle promises to transform standard pallet racking into semiautomatic
pallet racking
The storage specialist Bito has developed the PROmotion
Shuttle, a remote-controlled, battery-powered pallet
handling vehicle operating in pallet racking. This vehicle
ensures continuous and efficient infeeding and outfeeding of
pallets into a lane and keeps track of stock movements.
Improved productivity and efficiency in the intralogistics
sector is an imperative. Not only as far as smooth material flow
is concerned, but also in view of a reduced floor space
occupation, maximum utilisation of storage volume and
immediate product availability. To improve on these points,
many companies opt for storage facilities featuring
lanes to stock more than one load
carrier on the same
racking level and in the
same racking bay.
Compared to standard
racking facilities which
stock only one load carrier per bay
and level, storage in lanes increases the
compactness of storage by reducing the space
or the warehouse volume required for service aisles. As
a rule, storage facilities with lanes are designed as drive-in, pushback
or as live storage systems.
In view of a higher storage efficiency, shuttles are ideal for
infeeding, relocating and outfeeding load carriers into lanes. For
this reason, the shuttle solution has become the solution of
choice for servicing fully-automated bin storage facilities.
Recognising the benefit of this idea, Bito has enhanced its static
pallet racking system PRO with the PROmotion shuttle solution.
The PROmotion shuttle is a battery-powered, lane-bound
vehicle. Routed by remote control, the shuttle feeds pallets in and
out of the lane in which it is operating.Moving on purpose-built
guide rails, the shuttle "drives" up and down the lane on its own,
i.e. without a connected additional carrier vehicle. The shuttle
can be relocated into another lane with a conventional fork lift
truck. Energy supply is provided by a lithium-ion-battery.
Recharged batteries have a working period of up to12 hours and
also operate in deepfreeze environments.
The PROmotion System is generally
used in LIFO (last
in–first out) handling
processes and covers all
aspects that contribute
to improve efficiency:
undisrupted pallet infeeding and
outfeeding, stock control and compact
storage by continuously monitoring occupied and
available storage positions.
Programming is said to easy and flexible, allowing intuitive and
safe servicing. Operation is claimed to be fast and silent. Control
technology also allows FIFO (first in–first out) operation with
two PROmotion shuttles in the same lane.Moreover, the system
can be switched from LIFO to
FIFO operation as required. More articles from BITO Storage Systems Ltd: | 
