Pallet Tracking System
A leading manufacturer had a requirement to track pallets around their process from the palletisers to the wrappers to ensure that the correct despatch label was always applied. The old system used an electro-mechanical ‘shift register’ type system which was prone to errors, this causing the application of despatch labels to the wrong pallets – this in turn leading to at best re-work in the warehouse or in the worst case the incorrect pallet going to their customer. The system had to have a low cost of operation, and so the system that was chosen was one, which printed 2D DataMatrix codes onto self-adhesive labels, these being applied to a leg of each pallet. The uniquely identified pallet was then loaded with known product for a known batch at each palletiser, and then on arriving at any of the wrappers the pallet code could again be read and from our database we informed the despatch label printer what had to be printed for that pallet. This provides a robust system of internal factory tracking that has a low cost to operate.