With more than 80 years of winemaking experience, Delicato Family Vineyards produces more than 2.5 million cases of wine annually and exports bulk wine to other wineries. To keep up with demand, the company’s dual high-speed filling lines generate up to 200 pallets of glass bottles per day.
Until recently, Delicato used lift trucks to take pallets of filled wine cases from the palletizers at the end of its filling lines to semi-automatic stretch wrappers that secured the loads. The lift truck driver moved each pallet from the palletizer to the wrapper’s turntable, and then stepped down from the vehicle to start the wrap. Afterward, he remounted the lift truck, moved the wrapped pallet to the winery’s warehouse, and returned to repeat the process for the next load. Two drivers handled the output from the two lines. In addition to being time-consuming and labor-intensive, the procedure presented a safety hazard: Drivers were at risk of injury each time they got down from the lift truck.
