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Automated food warehouses: Automha’s solution

The Hershey Company, commonly called Hershey’s, is the largest chocolate company in the United States. It is headquartered in Hershey, Pennsylvania. It was founded by Milton S. Hershey in 1894 as the Hershey Chocolate Company, a branch of its Lancaster Caramel Company. Hershey has a worldwide sales network and is also known for producing chocolate for the US military. The unique taste of its chocolates has made it famous throughout the world.

Problem

Over the years, Hershey’s has continued to collect achievements, expanding its product range and worldwide sales network. In this context, the warehouse has increasingly begun to fulfill a key role in the order management system and in all phases of the company’s supply chain, including the delicate packaging phase of its products. The new automated handling system was designed and built by Automha for the new packaging lines dedicated to candy sacks.

Solution

Automha has designed and built a handling system side by side with the customer: 2 single-column lifters, which transport the incoming pallets onto an existing mezzanine.

On this mezzanine are:
– 2 Autosatmovers traveling in the same lane
– A series of catenaries that communicate with the customer’s production machines

The same system also performs the output flow. The handling system created by AUTOMHA manages load units with a maximum weight of 1000 Kg of each UDC and dimensions of 1219x1016x1372 mm. The system guarantees 40 cycles to the emptying lines every single hour.

Advantages of automated food storage

Hershey based its success on the pursuit of quality and precision at every stage of its activity. The company’s objective is to achieve efficiency in procurement, production, logistics, quality, facilities, and order fulfillment operations. This solution proposed by Automha has fully optimized the management rhythms of the packaging lines. And not only that: with this new intralogistics system, Hershey was able to reduce material management costs, create a safe work environment and help minimize the damage during production.