From Cartons to Customers: Engineering Predictable Flow in High-Speed Distribution

The Client: International Paper

Imagine the cartons holding your morning milk or favorite juice. For International Paper’s beverage packaging operation in Turlock, California, producing these essential containers is just half the battle. The other, equally critical half is getting them reliably to customers across the western U.S. and overseas – a daily challenge involving thousands of cartons moving with speed and precision. This facility is a vital link in the supply chain for liquid necessities, meaning even a small hiccup can have widespread repercussions.

The Challenge

In the fast-paced world of packaging distribution, reliability isn’t just a buzzword; it’s the bedrock of the operation. International Paper in Turlock faced the demanding task of handling continuous production flows and juggling multiple customer orders that needed to change over almost instantly. Their existing material handling system, installed before November 1998, was showing its age and creating significant bottlenecks.

The Growing Pains of an Outdated System

• Slow Palletizing: A key piece of equipment, an older gantry-style palletizer, simply couldn’t keep pace with the increasing volume and speed required for order fulfillment. It was like trying to funnel rush hour traffic through a single-lane road.
• Traffic Jams on the Line: The conveyor merge line where products from different production lines came together frequently experienced backups. These weren’t just delays; they were full stops.
• Constant Roadblocks: The system had multiple physical points where cartons would jam. Resolving these required halting the entire line, manual intervention to clear the blockage, and then a slow ramp-up back to speed. Every jam was a drain on time, labor, and efficiency.
• Sorting in the Slow Lane: The system used a legacy reflective tape system for sorting cartons to the correct palletizer. This technology, once sufficient, was overwhelmed by the higher volumes and rapid changeovers needed for modern distribution, leading to inaccuracies and further slowdowns.
• Reliability Below Par: Collectively, these issues meant the operation wasn’t hitting the consistent reliability levels needed to meet their crucial shipping goals. As Ron Young, Maintenance Team Leader at the 150,000 square-foot facility, put it:

“We were just not achieving the kinds of reliability levels needed to meet our shipping goals. For a business where speed, accuracy, and continuous flow are paramount, these inefficiencies were more than an inconvenience; they were a threat to operational excellence and cost-effectiveness.”

The Solution

Recognizing the critical need for a transformation, International Paper sought a partner who could not only provide equipment but also engineer a complete, reliable, and intelligent workflow. They needed an architect for their internal logistics, not just a supplier of building materials. This led them to FloStor Engineering.

More Than Just Equipment: The Power of Integration

FloStor stepped in not just as a vendor, but as a material handling system integrator. Think of an integrator as the general contractor and architect for your warehouse’s operational heart. Instead of buying conveyors from one company, palletizers from another, and trying to figure out how the control software talks to everything, a system integrator designs the entire solution from the ground up and manages its implementation.

FloStor worked closely with International Paper engineers to conceive a modern, highly dependable order-flow process. Their approach was comprehensive, looking at the entire journey of a carton from the sealing area to a ready-to-ship pallet.

Building a Symphony of Systems

The core of the FloStor solution involved integrating reliable conveyor units with advanced computer controls and automatic palletizers. Here’s how the new, streamlined flow operates:

• Seamless Entry: Cartons are sealed and imprinted with critical barcode and human-readable information identifying the customer and destination palletizer in an area adjacent to the distribution center.
• Intelligent Merge & Flow: Seven sealing lines feed cartons onto the main distribution center conveyor system. The system inducts these cartons onto a recirculating sortation conveyor on the mezzanine level. This is a critical piece of the puzzle – the recirculation loop acts like a controlled traffic circle, allowing continuous product flow even when there are momentary pauses or batch changeovers downstream. Batch changes are entered via a Human Machine Interface (HMI) without stopping the line.
• Precision Sorting: Guided by the sophisticated conveyor control system (the ‘brain’), cartons are accurately sorted from the recirculation loop onto specific lanes. Four lanes lead directly to the automatic palletizers, while a fifth lane is reserved for special handling, such as ‘no-reads’ (cartons the scanner couldn’t identify), hand stacking, or quality control checks.
• Automated Pallet Building: Once a carton reaches the correct lane, the automatic palletizers efficiently build stable, shipment-ready pallets.
• Final Preparation & Dispatch: Built pallets are released by the palletizer onto an automated transfer car. This car smoothly transports the pallet to a stretch wrap machine for securing the load. A clever bypass switch allows operators to pause pallets before wrapping if needed for tasks like adding corner boards, applying final labels, or performing quality checks. Finally, a chain-drive conveyor moves the wrapped pallets to a gravity conveyor line, holding them ready for forklift transport to the shipping dock.

FloStor’s Turnkey Approach: Your Single Point of Contact

A significant factor in the project’s success was FloStor providing a complete turnkey service. This meant they took responsibility for integrating all the disparate elements: the computer software and hardware, the electrical systems, the palletizers, and the conveyors.

International Paper didn’t have to manage multiple vendors or worry about whether different pieces of equipment would work together; FloStor handled the complexity, providing a single point of accountability.

The Proof is in the Performance

The results of the integrated system speak for themselves. Management at International Paper’s Turlock facility reported that the system not only met but exceeded their expectations.

With our order changeovers happening so fast, we needed a system that would give us a consistently high level of shipment accuracy. We now have that. After a lengthy selection process, our Engineering Group selected FloStor based on their design concept and their ability ¹ to do the job. FloStor exceeded our expectations. ² [Ron Young, Maintenance Team Leader]  

Beyond achieving the primary goal of improved reliability and shipment accuracy, the new system delivered tangible business benefits:

• Lower Operating Costs: Reduced system downtime meant less wasted labor and higher throughput, leading to a lower cost per carton shipped.
• Reduced Maintenance: The dependable new conveyor and palletizer equipment required less frequent maintenance compared to the old system, further contributing to cost savings.

By partnering with FloStor, International Paper transformed their material handling operation from one plagued by bottlenecks and unpredictability into a smooth, reliable, and cost-efficient engine capable of meeting the demands of modern, high-speed distribution. FloStor’s expertise as an integrator, designing and implementing a cohesive system rather than just selling components, was key to unlocking this operational excellence.

Post-Project Executive Review: Tough Issues and Sweet Outcomes

1) What were the three most difficult challenges of this project?

The three most difficult challenges faced by International Paper with their old system, which the project aimed to address, were:

• Inability to keep pace with demand: The old-style gantry palletizer struggled to maintain the speed required for the high volume and rapid order changeovers, creating a bottleneck.
• Frequent disruptions and manual intervention: The system experienced multiple “jam” points and merge line backups that required stopping the entire line and manual correction, severely hindering continuous flow.
• Outdated and volume-limited sortation: The legacy reflective tape sortation system was no longer capable of accurately managing the increasing volumes and rapid sorting demands of their operations.

2) What were the three best outcomes of the project?

The three best outcomes resulting from the new material handling system implemented by FloStor were:

• Consistently high level of shipment accuracy/reliability: This was a critical goal, and the new system successfully delivered dependable performance and accuracy.
• Lower cost per carton shipped: Achieved through reduced system downtime and increased operational efficiency.
• Less maintenance required: The new equipment proved more reliable, leading to decreased maintenance needs and contributing to lower overall operating costs.