The Elite Flower: Automated Mini-Load System

Established in 1991, The Elite Flower story started when floral industry pioneer Peter Hannaford planted a couple of rose hectares in Colombia with the help of his wife and a few close relatives. The family legacy continued with his son, Juan Carlos. A visionary leader and entrepreneur, who harnessed both the art and science of botany to catapult the company into one of the largest floral organizations in the world.

Today, Elite Flower blossoms into one of the largest and more innovative floral organizations in the World. They have continued to cultivate breakthrough developments in automation, logistics, and processing, to ensure ultimate freshness of their products without compromising  sustainability practices.

Getting to be one of the largest flower producers and distributors in the World requires huge challenges that need to be taken care of in order to be ahead of the competition. Elite Flower is aware of those challenges and for this reason they decided to start preparing the company for the future.

As customer demand continues to grow, Elite Flower stated the objectives/challenges that needed to be addressed with this project:

• Organize retrieval process
• Reduce manual labor
• Increase storage space
• Increase productivity of their operations

These challenges may be easy to identify, but solving them has a high level of complexity.

After hours of analyzing the Elite Group situation we came to the conclusion that a perfect solution for Elite Group would be the Interlake Mecalux Mini-Load System for Boxes. This Automated Storage and Retrieval System  (AS/RS) offers extraordinary versatility and is a perfect solution to optimize warehouse operations and improve efficiency. The system consisted of 3 self-supported rack aisles equipped with stacker cranes and numerous conveyors.

Mini Load system allows for the storage and retrieval of boxes in a highly organized manner, reducing manual labor and increasing productivity. By utilizing automated cranes, conveyors, and software controls, it significantly reduces picking and sorting errors, leading to faster order fulfillment and improved customer satisfaction. Additionally, the compact design of mini load systems allows to maximize the storage space and better utilize the warehouse. Overall, implementing a warehouse mini load system can result in cost savings, improved inventory management, and increased operational efficiency.

The Mini load automated storage and retrieval system for Elite flowers was designed to automatically transport carton boxes with flowers into and out of storage. The solution included the high density rack structure, stacker cranes, SRM’s (Storage and Retrieval Machines), a software that controls the system and a pickup station with conveyors where items are brought for picking.

To store and retrieve the boxes, the cranes travel up and down aisles between the racks, and a load-handling carriage travels along the crane to reach the correct height within the racks. Once at the specified storage location, the load-handling device uses a mechanism to pick or deposit the load. Once completed, the crane returns to the aisle end where the load is deposited for further processing and continue to load/unload boxes.

• Real-time inventory visibility – Accurate inventory data with instant reports.
• Extremely high-density storage – Mini load storage solution maximized the use of vertical space and storage density.
• Easy operation and reduce of manual labor – Only needs one trained operator to operate the software instructions for loading /unloading process.
• Secure product storage – Controlled inventory access reduces product damage, misplaced and lost inventory.
• Increase of Productivity – Improves operation efficiency by automating dangerous and repetitive storage tasks to free up labor for more valuable activities.
• Energy Savings – Mini load systems can operate in lights-out environments, minimizing power consumption.