After two intensive days of judging and deliberation, the judging panel concluded that Movipal from Stellenbosch University was the winning submission of PneuDrive Challenge 2014 sponsored by SEW-Eurodrive and Pneumax.
The 2014 competition, themed Green Warehousing Logistics, called on students to analyse and then design a solution for a specific operational problem in one of the following areas of a warehouse: retrieval, conveying, placement, packing, palletising and loading. The top three places for engineering design went to:
1. Stellenbosch University – Movipal.
2. Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University – TetraStack. (Also awarded the Innovation prize.)
3. Wits University – Out-The-Box-Palletiser.
Stellenbosch University – Movipal
PneuDrive Challenge 2014 winners.
Students Landolf Theron, Herman Nieuwoudt, Jos Van der Westhuizen and Stefan Nel proposed a mobile palletising solution. Their design addresses the problems associated with two warehouse operations, namely palletising and local transport, and combines the functionality of a gantry style palletiser and a forklift, providing a mobile palletising solution. The target of the Movipal is small to medium sized warehouses in the production and logistics industries.
Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University – TetraStack
TetraStack, an ultra high throughput warehouse defragmentation system designed by Adriane Bestic, ShuldhamPeard, Ashley Naude and Christopher Sephton, is a concept based on the popular Tetris game. Their design mirrors the sorting action of the game by continuously rearranging crates within a racking matrix so as to consume the least amount of space, as low down in the matrix as possible.
Wits University – Out-The-Box-Palletiser
Students Gareth Krisch, Adam Bartels and Eitan Kassuto presented a design that could be a solution to manual labour palletising problems by proposing a stand-alone, mobile palletising device. Their design could provide warehouses, which currently make use of manual loading, with an alternative that reduces running costs, increases productivity, improves worker safety and has the potential to fit in with most line palletising operations.
The judging team
This year’s judging panel consisted of Piergiorgio Bertoldi (MD Industrial Electronic Services), John Menasce (lead mechanical engineering consultant, HATCH), Norman Maleka (SEW-Eurodrive electronics manager), Russell Gill (SAFPA council member), Brandon Skinner (E&I engineer, DRA Mining), Heathcliff Barnard (technical manager Pneumax), Andre Badenhorst (technical director, SAR Electronics) and Theuns Greyvenstein (maxolution application engineer, SEW-Eurodrive).
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