Issue link: http://palletcentral.uberflip.com/i/1498036
46 PalletCentral • March-April 2023 palletcentral.com 46 PalletCentral • March-April 2023 ere are numerous examples I could show you where manpower doing their very best simply can't get the same throughput that an automated machine can." Early on, Wenninger saw opportunity in the automotive sector as a sales manager with another automation company, which inspired the start of Alliance Automation in 2008. "I started the company with an automotive focus, but our fi rst purchase order was from a pallet company. At that time, I didn't recognize the pallet industry as an industry. In 2014. Yaskawa Motoman, an industrial robotics company, approached us with a partnership opportunity. eir twenty years of experience in Europe included the lumber market." In the learning process, Wenninger knew that the pallet industry was one to automate. With no specifi c product to show, in March 2015, he attended his fi rst NWPCA show, to gather feedback. "I probably heard 150 times at that fi rst show, 'If you can solve the problem of dismantling pallets, that's the Holy Grail,'" he said. "We spent two years doing R&D and sold the fi rst dismantler in 2017. It's been a slow industry adoption curve, but we're seeing more all the time," he says. "Companies are looking to update their processes, effi ciency and safety to process wood faster to fulfi ll their orders." Alliance Automation off erings include the Robotic Pallet Dismantler, the Sort and Repair System, and its newest automation, the Urban Sawmill, used to optimize and trim wood to the optimum length coming off the end of the saw. Automating Quality Another reason to automate is delivering consistent, quality products. Automated machines are programmable to make determinations based on data that can increase quality. Universal Logic, developers of Neocortex – a powerful, state-of-the-art AI/sensor/motion-control software platform – has been working successfully for over 15 years with robotics for major companies providing supply chain automation, including the palletcentral.com 46 PalletCentral • March-April 2023