Intelligrated on List of 100 Great Supply Chain Projects

Intelligrated, an automated material handling solutions provider, has been recognized on Supply & Demand Chain Executive’s list of 100 great supply chain projects for its work with Bee Sweet Citrus. This is Intelligrated’s third such award since 2014.

Bee Sweet Citrus is a leading independent packer and shipper of California citrus, serving a global market that stretches from Europe to Australia. Faced with rising labor costs, safety concerns, high staff turnover and potential production increases, the company searched for an automated alternative to its manual palletizing processes to remain profitable and reach peak efficiency.

The automated palletizing system needed the flexibility to handle a multitude of citrus for various brands around the world, each requiring different packaging, pallets and layer patterns.

Bee Sweet turned to Intelligrated for a comprehensive integrated palletizing solution, combining industry leading automation experience and technology with a process marked by clear, consistent communication, thorough operational analysis and collaborative decision-making. This resulted in a system capable of handling 95 percent of Bee Sweet’s citrus varieties, with the flexibility to run 27 different stacking patterns and complicated pallet configurations.

This solution also reduced Bee Sweet’s labor requirements by 80 percent and, in turn, enabled existing employees to avoid excessive lifting and twisting movements and reduced congested forklift traffic, increasing operational efficiency and safety.

“In order to accommodate such a high level of complexity, we needed a multi-part system with barcode scanners, conveyor, sortation and palletizing,” said Jim Marderosian, president, Bee Sweet Citrus. “That’s why Intelligrated’s expertise and collaboration with our team was so important, to get all these moving parts on the same page. Intelligrated understood our problems and helped us improve the efficiency of our overall process.”

The automated palletizing system needed the flexibility to handle a multitude of citrus for various brands around the world.

The SDCE 100 is an annual list of 100 great supply chain projects, serving as a guide for supply chain executives looking for new opportunities to drive improvement in their own operations. These projects show how supply chain solution and service providers help their customers and clients achieve excellence and prepare their operations for success.