Jungheinrich has launched the "Laser-Grid" automatic height positioning system for its EFX 516/520 series man-up narrow-aisle order pickers. In high-bay warehouses, a picker working at 12-meter rack heights loses a surprising amount of time in what logistics engineers call "shrink time": the seconds spent traveling between levels while the operator visually confirms the correct rack slot, and the additional seconds spent making small height corrections after arriving one slot too high or too low. Across a shift with 400 picks, this can accumulate to over an hour of non-productive elevation travel.
The Laser-Grid system attacks the problem with "Rack-Mounted Transponder Tags." Small passive transponders are clipped onto the rack uprights at every slot level. A reader head on the mast fence scans each tag as the platform passes it. Because the tags are sequentially coded, the controller always knows the platform's absolute height without relying on encoder wheel slip or recalibration-important in cold stores where condensation affects mechanical sensors.
The engineering innovation is "Predictive Pre-Positioning." The picker's next order line is transmitted to the truck via the warehouse management system radio link the moment the current pick is confirmed. While the operator is still placing the previous carton on the pallet, the mast is already elevating toward the next slot at full speed, decelerating on a defined ramp curve that the controller computes from the payload on the platform-full pallets require gentler deceleration ramps for operator comfort. The platform arrives and stops level with the target slot within ±10 mm, and a green "pick" light in the operator handle illuminates only when the correct slot is aligned. Jungheinrich reports shrink time per level reduced from over 9 seconds to under 3 seconds, lifting effective picks-per-hour in pilot installations by 18%.
