Varsha Sankar

Pallet Mate

This was part of the Capstone project where we partnered with IFDA. Where our team was tasked to develop a product that would help create a positive impact on the warehouse workers while maintaining the efficiency of the process.

That included identifying key stakeholders, opportunity gaps, understanding the problem, ideating, prototyping, testing, and creating a product launch plan that we presented to the stakeholders.

The entire process took place over 4 phases.

Tools - Figma, Canva, Rhino, Keyshot, Procreate

Areas - Industrial Design, User Research, User Experience, Prototyping

Collaborators - Sumairha, Monica, Weiyi, Tianyang, Jasveen, Varsha

Article - PalletMate x IFDA

What is Pallet Mate?

PalletMate is a pallet jack extension that not only helps make picking, stacking, and wrapping of orders hassle free but also reduces the time taken to complete orders, making the selection process more efficient.

Problem

The primary problem faced by the IFDA members is that warehouse jobs tend to be physically taxing. Also, current warehouse trends note a high turnover rate and are constantly facing labor shortages, which are only projected to worsen.

To help understand the problem better and identify areas for improvement, our team began by conducting research.

Phase 1 - Research

To help understand the problems faced by warehouses, we began conducting PESTLE analysis and Domain Research that helped us understand the industry better.

We then decided to interview 7 warehouse managers and realized that the pain points faced by warehouses differed based on their size and whether they were manual, automatic, or semi-automatic. Cost was one of the biggest barriers for semi-automatic and manual warehouses as to why they couldn’t adopt new technologies.

For our Field Research, we decided to visit 2 warehouses, a semi-automatic and a manual warehouse. Our time there made us realize we had to focus on an area. We decided to focus on Manual warehouses as, currently, most warehouses are moving toward automation, but most manual warehouse has insufficient capital and need a competitive advantage to stay in the game.

Users in the Warehouse

Manual Warehouses primarily have five different target segments Selectors, Replenishers, Putaway, Receivers, and Managers.

After conducting 10 user interviews and shadowing the warehouse operations, we learned that:

• Every worker starts work in the warehouse as a selector. The job of the selector is both physically taxing and has the highest rate of injury. It is also the job that has the most turnover.

  
  
  

Workcycyle & Painpoints of a selector

To understand the process of selection better, we shadowed 3 selectors over a span of 2 shifts. We then created a journey map to help understand the selection process. After this we identified the multiple pain-points of selectors along the entire journey map.

User Interview & co-design Sessions

Once we identified all the pain points in the selectors’ workflow, we needed to determine which pain point or pain points we should focus on. In order to do so we conducted a co-design sessions.

Insight from the co-design sessions and interviews

• New selectors don’t have the expertise to stack pallets properly, which leads to accidents and requires the selector to restack their orders mid-job.

• Restacking pallets results in losing valuable time as the work is needlessly repeated.

• Accidents from improper stacking also result in cases being damaged.

• Selectors are required to pick up anywhere between 1000-1200 cases per shift. The repeated action of picking and stacking, along with the long working hours, creates physical and mental strain for the workers. It could also result in musculoskeletal injuries.

• Constantly running in circles around the pallet while wrapping causes dizziness.

• Selectors are paid based on speed and accuracy, which results in them rushing on the warehouse floor.

INSIGHT TO FORM DESIGN PRINCIPLES

Based on our insights, we realized that our design needed 3 design principles - Safety, Ease of use, and Comfort.

PHASE 2 - IDEATION

Once we had discovered the problems, we needed to identify our concepts of how to solve them. In order to do so, we used a combination of crazy 8s, round robin, and co-design sessions for ideation.

The three concepts we came up with included - Pallet Jack Redesign, Shelf Modifications, and Case Organization Tools

Ideation Sketches

Final Concept

Pallet Jack Optimisation

Once we had our initial concepts, we pitched them to the selectors, who found the pallet jack extension to be useful.

They said that if the pallet jack extension could prevent items from falling and reduce the number of times they would need to bend to pick up the boxes without reducing the speed and efficiency of their job, that would be helpful.

PHASE 3 - PROTOTYPING

PalletMate Version 1

Our first prototype was done using Rhino and Keyshot. it had its own share of flaws.

Things that don’t work

• The foot padel was located in an inconvenient location and did not work well with the stop mechanism.

• Pallet barriers that were required to be raised manually slowed down the process.

Things that worked

• Pallet lifting mechanism

• Pallet rotation for wrapping

PalletMate Version 2

For the second version, we looked into making the user experience smoother; this included creating a remote control that would help with the rotation for wrapping and pallet height adjustment. It also included creating automated guardrails using telescopic channels.

We also added a light that would blink right before rotation to alert selectors. Finally, we gave the PalletMate some clearance in the bottom that would help ensure smooth rotation

PHASE 4 - TEsting

To validate our design, we needed to do user testing, for which we created a wooden prototype. The prototype could be height adjusted, had adjustable guard rails, and could be rotated.

We then tested our design with the existing pallet jacks and the current warehouse conditions. Our experiment included picking up 5 items with the PalletMate as well as picking up 5 items without the Palletmate (current method). Through the experiment, we realized that when the selectors used the PalletMate, it increased their speed by 5 seconds per case.

FINAL DESIGN - PalletMate

PalletMate is designed to be a pallet jack extension that can be added to the current pallet jack that are used in food distribution warehouses.

The Palletmate clips onto the pallet jacks' prongs and has the following features.

Feature 1

Feature 2

FEATURE 3

User Experience

The new user experience reduces the effort needed by selectors to pick items from shelves and place them on the pallet.

It also prevents accidents that occur when selectors make sharp turns to maneuver around the warehouse.

Finally, the automated rotation of the pallet mate allows for ease of use in wrapping.

Impact created by PalletMate

PalletMate helps improve the working conditions for employees and saves the warehouse money.