CeMAT set for box opening payback

Innovative inbound goods system set to demonstrate six month ROI.

TM Robotics, the European sales partner of Toshiba Machine and Cornerstone, will exhibit at CeMAT, the world's leading fair for intralogistics, in Hannover from May 27 to 31, 2008. The company will show the patented ABOT (Automated Box Opening Technology) system, a unique robotic solution for automating the opening and cutting of cases, boxes and cartons.

ABOT uses a set of sensors to measure a box moving down a built-in conveyor. It then tailors the way the box is cut to a pre-programmed pattern. Perfect for use in the retail, engineering and logistics industries where it finds applications in re-packaging operations, returns processing, stocking, distribution and replenishing picking shelves in order fulfilment. ABOT is capable of dealing with up to eighteen hundred cases per hour and TM Robotics believes that operations shifting 2,500 boxes a day will receive payback on the system in six months.

ABOT can accept material to be opened in any combination or order without the need to run the same size boxes, batches or groups together. Three different versions of the machine, ABOT ONE, ABOT DUO, and ABOT MAGNUM use single pass, double or triple pass conveyors for opening 600, 1200 or 1800 items per hour. ABOT DUO is based on a dual lane configuration to provide optimum output, while ABOT ONE caters for lower capacity operations on a more affordable budget. The MAGNUM version uses three lanes to provide ultra high capacity.

“We envisage the ABOT providing enormous benefits to engineering, handling and logistics companies by reducing worker injuries and damage to products,” explained Nigel Smith, managing director of TM Robotics. “The machine can even be used for automating the production of point of display material as well as simply opening stock items. ABOT is well placed as a technology in CeMAT's concept of intralogistics,” he concluded.

ABOT was developed and patented in the US by Cornerstone Automation Systems Inc, a specialist in hardware and software solutions for logistics and warehouse operations.