Warehouse Automation

Improve productivity​

✅ In material handling and warehousing, the number of boxes sorted and shipped per minute is vitally important and any productivity gains however small make a big impact over a year.

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✅ At Fortress our safety equipment is all customisable to make sure that your exact safety and machine control requirements are met to make sure you are not compromising on your productivity.

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✅ Examples of productivity gains are integrated machine controls in our interlocks to ensure fast shut down and start-up of machinery as soon as someone needs to access and restart a machine once they have cleared a jam.​

Less downtime​

✅ Our interlocks are built to last, our amGardpro range has undergone 5,000,000 cycles in testing to ensure they last, even in harsh environments or lots of use.

✅ This ensures that you reduce the number of equipment failures to stop unnecessary downtime when something goes wrong, it is not uncommon for us to get a request for a quote on products we have supplied 20+ years ago.

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✅ Even if you have inhouse spares, a machine being down for an hour while units are replaced can have significant costs.

Whole body access protection​

✅  In warehousing whole body access is a common occurrence, machines and robots operate in large areas while boxes and products are often dropped in hazardous areas and jams also occur regularly.

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✅ Ensuring you prevent unexpected start-up is vital as someone picking up dropped boxes can be dangerously close to robotics or conveyor systems.

✅ Presence detection is challenging as the integration of machinery means there can be a lot of blind spots in a hazardous area and fallen boxes can cause a machine to shut down where it may be able to continue but just requires human intervention for that box when someone is ready to enter, this can badly effect productivity.

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✅ This makes Fortress’ extracted personnel (or safety) key a great solution for the warehousing sector, the hazardous zone cannot be accessed until a key has been removed from Fortress’ interlock, this will then prevent the machine from being restarted while the operator has the personnel key with them.

Save system costs by meeting standards with a single product​

✅ The type-C standards in the warehousing automation sector can be very prescriptive, EN528, for example, requires a large number of things for aisle access like a key being used for crane operation but also the door must close and lock behind the operator, but ensure the system is in a safe state.

✅ In many cases this requires several devices to enable this kind of functionality, however as Fortress’ interlocks are modular and fully customisable they are able to meet all of these points with a single unit: escape release, auxiliary release, e-stop, machine controls, key switches and more.

✅ This saves on installation time and costs, over all system costs, and supply chain costs.

Trapped key systems integrated into electromechanical locks​

✅ Our safety rated trapped key system can be integrated into our electromechanically interlocks to enable a safety solution to be designed with a mix of traditional trapped key safety systems and safety PLC driven systems.

✅ This can help you isolate other sources of energy a PLC may struggle to control or be very expensive to control like potential energy or fluid power.

✅ It also enables customers to meet standards where mode selection is a key part of the safety rated components of a system, for example in EN 528.

Scale faster​

✅ As the world uses the internet more and more to order products and supply chains are optimised and automated to stay competitive often the largest problem for warehouse automation machine builders and end users is scaling their solutions as fast as possible.

✅ Fortress works with machine builders and end users to help configure custom products that can be installed quickly and easily.

✅ Mounting plates enable fast mechanical installation and networked products make wiring these safety products faster than ever with the ability to daisy chain power and data, the consolidation of products into a single interlock makes installation a painless process.