Can mixed case palletizing be automated?

Building a pallet from one case size is a solved problem. Building one from fourteen is a different project with a different budget, and the honest answer for most small plants is not yet.

Free, about two minutes, no phone number. You get an honest no when a robot is the wrong answer.

What the job actually is

An order calls for cases of several different products, and somebody builds a stable pallet out of them, typically heaviest and largest on the bottom. It is part physical work and part planning, and the planning is the hard part to automate.

Signs it is worth automating

• You are already building mixed pallets by hand at volume and the labor is significant.
• Your case dimensions are known and stable per SKU, even if the mix changes.
• You have a warehouse or order system that can tell a cell what is coming.
• Order profiles repeat enough that patterns can be precomputed.

What the cell looks like

A 20 to 35 kg class arm with a gripper that handles the full case size range, plus pattern building software that decides the stack order. Vision or a warehouse system feed tells the cell what is arriving. Cost scales with case variety far more than with case weight.

This is one job inside a bigger family. The palletizing guide covers the equipment classes, the cost ranges, and the disqualifiers for all of it.

When the answer is no

• Case sizes are not documented and nobody can hand you a dimension table. Fix that first, it costs nothing and it is required either way.
• Order profiles are genuinely random and every pallet is a new puzzle.
• You build fewer than a few mixed pallets an hour. The software and integration cost will not amortize.
• Your cases are damaged or inconsistent enough that gripping is unreliable.

What an engineer has to verify

• A complete case dimension and weight table for every SKU that can appear.
• Order profile data over a real month, to see how much variety actually occurs.
• Whether the pattern software can be fed live from your existing system.
• Gripper coverage across the smallest and largest case.
• Stability requirements for the finished pallet, including any customer or carrier standard.

Safety is not on that list because it is not ours to determine. Cell design, guarding and the risk assessment belong to an independent certified integrator, every time.

What the research says

Peer reviewed work from our research library on this application. These are studies of other plants and other settings, not a prediction about yours, and the excerpts are the authors' own words. Every title links to the source so you can check us.

• The Next Step in Robot Commissioning: Autonomous Picking and Palletizing Robert Krug et al. (2016), IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters

  From the abstract: “So far, autonomous order picking (commissioning) systems have not been able to meet the stringent demands regarding speed, safety, and accuracy of real-world warehouse automation, resulting in reliance on human workers.”

• A Flexible Robotic Depalletizing System for Supermarket Logistics Riccardo Caccavale et al. (2020), IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters

  From the abstract: “Depalletizing robotic systems are commonly deployed to automatize and speed-up parts of logistic processes.”

• Mixed Palletizing for Smart Warehouse Environments: Sustainability Review of Existing Methods Adamos Daios et al. (2024), Sustainability

  From the abstract: “Mixed palletizing constitutes one of the problems in the logistics domain aroused from the need for fast product movement to satisfy the continuously increasing number of customers with the demand for highly personalized goods.”

• Development of automated high-speed depalletizing system for complex stacking on roll box pallets Haruna Eto et al. (2019), Journal of Advanced Mechanical Design Systems and Manufacturing

  From the abstract: “The need for automated distribution systems has recently grown due to labor shortages and an increasing preference among consumers to shop online.”

• Manual palletizing simulation: time and ergonomic study Andrzej Marek Lasota (2025), International Journal on Interactive Design and Manufacturing (IJIDeM)

  From the abstract: “Despite automation, manual palletizing is still common in the manufacturing and distribution industries.”

The full palletizing and depalletizing shelf has 13 works.

Someone has already done this

See it run

Two clips of this job actually running, from two different manufacturers. Both are the makers' own marketing footage, showing a cell under good conditions with a part it was set up for, so watch them for what the motion looks like rather than as evidence of what your rate would be.