With its intelligent classification system breeze-PAVE, breeze innovations GmbH is aims to fundamentally transform pallet inspection. The system evaluates pallets fully automatically, quickly, and objectively.
Pallets form the backbone of logistics, enabling the transport of goods worldwide in countless processes. Over the course of their life cycle, they often travel hundreds of thousands of kilometers and carry heavy loads — wear and tear is therefore unavoidable. The consequences of damaged pallets can vary greatly depending on the severity of the damage: protruding parts, the possible collapse of loads, or impaired machine capability and transport safety due to severely damaged pallets are risks that can cause major disruptions to logistics processes, complete operational shutdowns, or transport damage. Damage to goods may also lead customers to refuse acceptance. Logistics companies naturally want to avoid financial losses, such as potential penalties, scrap, or costly repairs, wherever possible.
For this reason, empty pallets are repeatedly inspected during pallet exchange — however, this is usually done manually, explains Dr. Michael Kleinkes, one of the founders and Managing Director of breeze innovations GmbH based in Haltern am See: “These inspections are physically demanding and often subjective, which frequently leads to discussions during the handover of inspected and classified empty pallets.”
Kleinkes and his partner wanted to fundamentally change this situation. “Our goal was to develop a classification system that allows the condition of pallets to be assessed fully automatically, fast, reliably, reproducibly, and above all objectively, with minimal effort,” says Kleinkes. With breeze-PAVE, such a solution is now available to the pallet market.
Hybrid Sensor Technology Creates Digital Twins
The innovative system makes it possible to capture key pallet characteristics including the condition of each individual pallet component, color, brightness, and 3D dimensions, thus enabling the best possible assessment of pallet quality. The reliable classification of both colour and brightness is extremely important: many pooling companies mark their own pallet inventory with a dedicated colour to distinguish them more easily from rental pallets operated by competitors. Brightness detection plays a key role in the classification of exchange pallets. When checking component dimensions — deck boards, stringer boards, cross boards, and blocks — breeze-PAVE detects whether these elements comply with the specified geometric dimensions and required positions. If they do not, the corresponding areas are marked, and the pallet’s quality rating is downgraded.
Breeze relies on a multi-sensor system for data acquisition, explains Kleinkes: “Pallets are scanned by breeze-PAVE in motion from all directions: top, bottom, sides, front, and rear using multiple laser sensors, while brightness is checked simultaneously. This combination allows us to achieve complete 360-degree scanning of the real objects, providing a solid basis for assessing the condition of the new and used pallets being inspected.” The system also reliably detects chemical residues and contamination such as oil, paint, or adhering cardboard.
From the captured information, a digital twin is created, which breeze-PAVE then analyzes in detail using software. In this step, deviations from predefined quality characteristics are automatically detected, the pallet is classified, and clearly classified into quality grades A, B, C, or ‘defective.’ The evaluation profiles can be flexibly adapted to the user’s specifications and cover both common load carrier standards such as EPAL, as well as individual, customer-specific requirements.
“In addition, the software enables users to achieve customer-specific pallet classification using configurable parameter sets that are independent of common standards,” explains Kleinkes. “This has the advantage that individual profiles can be created for any customer and selected at the push of a button in the software. This makes it possible to meet customer requirements in the best possible way.”
Over 1,000 Pallets per Hour
Compared to manual pallet inspection, breeze-PAVE offers a range of advantages. The most important feature of the system is the objectivity of the automated process, which significantly increases process reliability. Another major advantage is the system’s exceptional accuracy and speed: during operation, it captures several million 3D measurement points per pallet without impacting cycle time, evaluates them in less than one second, and detects not only obvious damage but even the smallest deviations.
This impressive performance currently enables a throughput of well over 1,000 pallets per hour per system. These pallets can be inspected during normal operation — on the fly, without stopping the load carriers. Especially in high-throughput processes, this results in enormous savings in time and labour.
“Based on the evaluation time, we could theoretically inspect up to 4,000 pallets per hour per system — but this rate cannot be realized with current conveyor technology. The precision and speed of breeze-PAVE are absolutely unattainable for the human eye,” emphasizes Kleinkes.
Another strength of breeze-PAVE is its ease of integration into existing conveyor and sorting systems. It requires only 1.5 meters of installation space above the conveyor technology and a gap of around 25 centimeters in the conveyor line. Alternatively, breeze also offers a complete solution with its own conveyor technology. If required, the system control can also be integrated into existing control cabinets.
Optimized Digital Load Carrier Management
According to Kleinkes, full integration into digital load carrier management systems represents an important milestone toward the digitalization of logistics processes: “For every pallet inspected, breeze-PAVE generates an online report that can be evaluated according to various criteria, such as shipments, quality grades, or locations. If desired, the captured data is transmitted directly to the cloud and made available to the user in real time. This enables transparent, cross-site monitoring of pallet quality and, for example, long-term observation of the quality of a specific customer’s pallets over months. For modern logistics processes, this technology is a central building block and a decisive step toward digitalized load carrier management.”
Moreover, breeze-PAVE is not limited to wooden pallets but can inspect all types of load carriers, such as plastic pallets, mesh boxes, loaded containers or packaged goods. Information such as dimensions, volume, overhangs, or deformations of such objects is precisely captured and digitally evaluated by the system. “In this development, we initially focused on wooden pallets, but based on our many years of experience in automation, we are able to use it as a flexible platform for individual customer solutions and adapt it to the respective requirements,” says Kleinkes.
According to him, the system’s capabilities go far beyond merely classifying empty or loaded load carriers: “With breeze-PAVE, we can digitize virtually anything—from reusable drinking cups to large objects — and are able to detect any kind of geometric shape or positional deviation in virtually any object. At present, however, we are focusing on pallets and are already working on additional solutions in this area, such as automated material monitoring in the repair process. This allows the costs incurred per repaired batch to be automatically tracked and invoiced.”
Economically Attractive Solution
The system developed by breeze innovations has a high technological standard and is based on established sensor and software technologies. According to Kleinkes, the purchase costs of the classification system are amortized within a short time: “Saved staff costs, high availability even during staff shortages, illness, or vacation, reduced misclassifications and avoided returns, as well as the reliable detection of counterfeit pallets — which are increasingly causing problems in logistics — make breeze-PAVE an economically attractive solution. Companies that inspect or sort large quantities of pallets every day benefit enormously from this innovation.”
For employees, day-to-day operations remain almost unchanged: pallets continue to be fed, removed, or routed to repair as usual, depending on the classification result. What is new, however, is that breeze-PAVE fully automates the previously manual inspection of pallet quality and provides an objective classification evaluation in less than one second. For every delivery process, a digital quality report is available via a web server and can be displayed on any device with a web browser. Warehouse staff and truck drivers thus receive an immediate, transparent overview of the load composition and the condition of the pallets at a glance. With the objective results of breeze-PAVE in the form of transparent reports, discussions about pallet quality at the loading dock are now a thing of the past.
