Background
Manually unloading floor loaded boxes at a national plumbing supply distribution center was
becoming inefficient. Typically, the inbound dock had 3 employees tasked with unloading 53’ trailers.
Two workers were assigned to palletizing product inside the trailer while a third would remove
completed pallets with a forklift. On average, the process would take 5 hours to complete.
3 men x 5 hours = 15 man hours
The Solution
The distribution center (DC) integrated a Destuff-IT™ machine in combination with a dock layout
reconfiguration within their inbound process. This significantly reduced the man hours that were
required to unload their trailer.
4 men x 2 hours = 8 man hours
By reconfiguring the dock and using the Destuff-it, the DC realized productivity gains of 7 man
hours or 46%.
With four workers tasked with unloading the trailer, one worker was positioned on the
Destuff-it operator platform and controlled the unloading tempo. Because of the optimal
positioning to the box wall, the worker safely unloaded the product onto the system’s articulating
conveyor and continuously moved the machine further into the trailer until all the product was
removed. On the dock, multiple pallets were positioned on either side of the powered roller conveyor.
Two employees removed product from the conveyor and filled pallets. Once a pallet was full, it was
shrinkwrapped and removed via forklift by a fourth dock worker.