March 11 2014
Refrigerated & Frozen Foods - AS/RS: Making Missions Possible
Westfalia's Dan Labell was recently featured in Refrigerated & Frozen Foods' article, "AS/RS: Making Missions Possible." Editor-in-Chief, Marina Mayer explains, If you’ve ever worked in a freezer or even just walked in and out of one for brief periods of time, you know—it’s cold! But, exposing employees to harsh conditions can no longer be acceptable.
Case in point—the human body wasn’t designed to work in sub-zero temperatures, yet the majority of frozen food operations still conduct warehousing activities manually, says Dan Labell, president of Westfalia Technologies, Inc.
“Cold storage facilities are difficult places to work and typically require frequent warm-up breaks,” he adds. “Today, automation is being used more often to deliver product from a freezer to a warmer environment for picking. Automation is not being used to replace labor, but to decouple it from the necessity of working in a sub-zero environment.”
Thankfully, today’s automated storage retrieval systems (AS/RS) make it so workers can complete tasks in normal temperatures without disrupting the mission.