Automation upgrades reduce sortation system wiring by 50% and lower costs by thousands

If you’re in the intralogistics industry, you know – business continues to boom. But for large postal and parcel providers, e-commerce retailers and third-party logistics (3PL) companies alike, capital investments still need to make good business sense. NPI understands this and concentrates on customer ROI when designing parcel sortation solutions. The company’s GenIII Xstream linear shoe sorter and standalone Singulator are just two examples.

“Our customers typically process at least 40,000 packages per day, so they need to maximize uptime and throughput, reduce costs and offset labor shortages. By keeping their goals in mind, we continue to shorten the time to ROI as much as possible,” CTO Joshua Owens says. “To accomplish this, we spend about 60% of in-house engineering efforts on R&D and continue to add key engineering resources as our products evolve.”

NPI was founded by Henry Daboub in 1977 and released the first fully automated mail sorting machine the following year. The Fort Worth, Texas-based company focused on letter and flat sortation until 2007 when it began operating an e-commerce facility that processed polypacks for mailing pharmaceuticals. Owens and COO Brent Daboub found the floppy packages difficult for standard machines to handle, so they developed the Xstream system.

The team recently released the NPI Singulator, which can handle up to 7,500 packages per hour with two operators. The Singulator offers a modular, cost-effective induct for an Xstream or equipment from other intralogistics OEMs. “Compared to the large, complex and expensive automated induct systems on the market, our Singulator leads the industry in terms of reduced footprint, cost and labor requirements,” explains Brent Daboub.

To meet current demands and assure innovation into the future, NPI expanded its 100,000-square-foot facility with an additional 18,000 square feet of storage and 25,000 square feet of manufacturing space. Standardizing on New Automation Technology from Beckhoff – from EtherCAT networking and scalable controllers to the new TwinCAT/BSD alternative operating system – has also proven invaluable for the future of the company.

Overcoming legacy controller’s throughput limitations

While NPI’s solutions keep evolving to meet today’s demands, legacy networking and control technologies have not. By nature, sortation systems are, expansive and teeming with nodes, which exacerbates performance limitations in switch-based protocols. Also, the company wanted its machines to be modular and easily extensible. Discrete I/O and Ethernet, which NPI previously used, introduced unnecessary complexity, costs and installation effort.

The GenI and GenII Xstream machines used an ARM-based microcontroller with a proprietary board that NPI developed in house. However, the microcontroller did not offer the necessary flexibility for customer requirements. The engineers began evaluating vendors of scalable platform of commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) in 2017 ahead of the GenIII Xstream redesign. NPI standardized on Beckhoff, working with the vendor’s Dallas-based team, including Sales Engineer Jeff Kuzniar and Applications Engineer Isaac Spear.

“Standardized hardware offered us room to grow without having to redesign boards, find new processors or add memory,” Owens says. “I was looking for a company that's moving forward and not just building what they've always built. Beckhoff was easy to choose after comparing system availability, scalability and I/O capabilities with EtherCAT.”

Extreme controller performance boosts Xstream system

NPI found powerful and inherently scalable industrial control options in the Beckhoff portfolio. For standalone Singulator units used with other sorters, NPI uses a Beckhoff C6017 ultra-compact Industrial PC (IPC). For combined Singulator and Xstream setups, a DIN rail mounted CX2030 series Embedded PC – or “PLC” – has served as the main controller for most applications. NPI recently switched to the CX2043, which boasts a quad-core AMD Ryzen™ processor with a clock speed of 3.35 GHz, to gain more processing power for future expansion capabilities.

New NPI machinery uses TwinCAT/BSD instead of Windows 10 IoT. This Windows alternative combines Beckhoff’s decades of in-house controls development, scalable hardware and real-time capabilities with the enhanced security and performance of a modern UNIX-based OS. Today’s PLCs all use real-time operating system (RTOS) options rather than the proprietary firmware of yesteryear. Beckhoff controllers with TwinCAT/BSD, however, enhance this architecture through a real-time kernel, higher RAM and options for terabytes of removable media, as well as extended functions such as spreading tasks across multiple cores and running third-party software alongside the PLC. Engineers can also select from a wide range of Intel or AMD processors from single and multi-core microprocessors up to very high-performance multi-core processors. TwinCAT/BSD Hypervisor enables simultaneous execution of virtual machines running Windows or Linux distributions.

Beyond performance gains, the smaller image size of TwinCAT/BSD reduces compact flash requirements, which lowers costs and allows NPI to deploy the image 70% faster. But those were not the main motivators for NPI. “We’re always looking for the most robust and secure automation system for our customers. Migrating to TwinCAT/BSD further hardens our systems,” Owens says. “Most importantly, the platform based on FreeBSD makes PC-based control a viable option to our more OS-sensitive customers by removing the Windows association. To me, Beckhoff IPCs already functioned like more powerful PLCs even when running Windows.”

TwinCAT and EtherCAT exceed requirements

NPI appreciates the power of TwinCAT 3 automation software and the EtherCAT industrial Ethernet system. TwinCAT is an end-to-end engineering and runtime environment for everything from PLC and motion control to IoT. It empowers engineers to program in the languages they know best or that best fit the application – from open, internationally standardized IEC 61131-3 and its object-oriented extensions to function blocks and computer science standards. Migrating to the Beckhoff platform from the homegrown C++ code on NPI’s legacy microcontrollers was another gamechanger, according to Owens: “The Visual Studio-based integrated development environment (IDE) has really helped us to continue on our path forward.”

Using the ADS protocol, TwinCAT speeds up commissioning by automatically scanning in devices on an EtherCAT network. NPI uses a variety of EtherCAT I/O Terminals and Box modules. The IP67-rated, remote I/O solutions with M8 and M12 connectors mount directly on the Singulator and each 11-foot middle module of the Xstream. The open protocol has also simplified use of third-party devices, since the EtherCAT Technology Group ensures device interoperability. The functional principle of EtherCAT on its own impressed Owens and Daboub. EtherCAT supports real-time communication, up to 65,535 nodes on one network and free selection of topology – line, star, tree, mixed, etc. – without affecting performance.

“We were looking for something that could eliminate the degraded performance you often see in I/O-intensive systems. EtherNet/IP, for example, and other platforms see performance start to degrade the more nodes you put on them, resulting in the need for more networks, hardware and engineering effort,” Owens says. “EtherCAT is a high-speed, deterministic communication protocol. The use of redundant EtherCAT cabling throughout our systems and the readily available diagnostics have been other important advantages.”

Doug Schuchart, Global Material Handling & Intralogistics Manager at Beckhoff, adds: “The reduced cost and complexity is only part of the benefit our customers are seeing from a simplified architecture as a result of EtherCAT. The reduced architecture also provides considerable diagnostic and system life-cycle advantages as well as simplified digitization for IIoT and Industry 4.0 initiatives.”

Throughput skyrockets at 3PL provider

The Singulator and GenIII Xstream systems’ power is illustrated clearly at a 3PL facility in Greater Los Angeles, according to local NPI Sales Support Manager Shane Potter. At two induct points, workers move gaylords (i.e. large cardboard bins containing unsorted parcels), using pallet jacks onto lifts. Each lift dumps the packages into the Singulator’s accumulation conveyor. Sensors limit the flow of packages to operators who place them on the main conveyor. NPI’s dynamic high-speed gapping conveyors are driven by servomotors operated over EtherCAT, which allows for precise separation of packages required by downstream peripherals. Tracking information is communicated over EtherCAT to the Beckhoff controller, then via TCP/IP to NPI’s warehouse control system (WCS) software to determine the sort point.

“When parcels reach the correct output, NPI’s patented stepper-driven diverter routes the appropriate number of shoes onto the divert rail. Parcels are directed into sacks or bulk containers to be delivered to post offices across the U.S.,” Potter explains. “Using large-diameter Urethane coated bearings on slat ends and a patented independent chain tensioning system, our engineering team made the Xstream system’s operation as safe, smooth and quiet as possible.”

By implementing NPI solutions, the 3PL more than doubled throughput. The company now provides same-day turnaround, meaning packages leave within 24 hours of arrival at its dock. The company also reduced intense labor requirements, which is critical during peak times, particularly with ongoing labor shortages. Before the technology upgrades, this site needed three shifts working six days per week to keep up. Now just one shift five days per week handles more products and packages than the company previously thought possible.

An Xstream success

While these outcomes are impressive, NPI has implemented even bigger systems and plans to keep developing automated solutions. For starters, NPI is releasing a dual 22-inch chute that uses a pneumatic actuator to divert parcels, doubling the number of sacks for more granular sorting. The company created an AWS dashboard to visualize WCS data and let management compare performance at sites with robust analytics. Owens and Daboub are also working on custom robotics to fill the Singulator’s operator stations. These robots will supplement labor during peak times or overnight for 24/7 productivity. Owens sees increasing automation capabilities, with a firm foundation built with Beckhoff technologies, as key to shortening customer ROIs.

In the largest Xstream applications, EtherCAT allowed for systems of up to 481 nodes on one network with no performance issues. The EtherCAT Box modules ensure extension of the middle sortation modules, which reassures NPI and its customers they can scale up to meet future demand. In addition, the IP67 I/O modules have provided impressive savings, including a 50% reduction in cabling. This approach saves $4,700 per Xstream system for overall wiring effort, Owens explains: “That saves five days in the field for our technicians, which is a huge reduction.”

The CX2030 Embedded PC offered 600% higher CPU power and 800% more RAM compared to NPI’s microcontroller. Based on the company’s tests, the CX2043 boosts those figures by an additional 22%. Using COTS hardware from Beckhoff helps NPI escape the continuous cycle of redesigning the microcontroller, as Kuzniar points out: “NPI’s experience is a great example of how we protect customers from control system obsolescence. When our next-generation IPC came out, they were able to use the same TwinCAT PLC project without replacing any I/O, and that will continue to be the case as we release even more powerful hardware.”

Migrating away from the microcontroller meant NPI needed to adapt a decade of development in mere months. Assistance from the local Beckhoff team during this process, along with no-cost technical support over the phone for standard troubleshooting, has been critical, according to Owens. “We were not a PLC company when we started evaluating controls vendors, and the strong support structure at Beckhoff was key to our success,” he says. “As we continue to evolve our products, I can’t imagine NPI moving away from Beckhoff. Beyond the great support, their control platform provides all the room we need to keep growing at a rapid pace.”