Dock Equipment: High-speed doors slice into costs

In 2006, Palermo’s Pizza, one of the countries top five frozen pizza brands, built a 135,000-square-foot plant in Milwaukee that employed 200 people. Amid double-digit growth, the company added 64,000 square feet and now employs 650 people. A series of high performance doors provides quick and efficient access to finished product in the facility’s 35,000-square-foot freezer.

Facilities engineer Steve Daniels says product quality is a top concern. To maintain product quality, Palermo’s can only allow the product on the production line for a limited time before it has to go into the freezer. In this high-volume operation, it is essential that that the doors stay functional and maintain temperatures.

“Our freezer is maintained at –15 degrees. Any time you open the door, two things happen,” Daniels says. “My production people are miserable working with –15-degree air blowing on them, and I’m working harder to keep the space cold when I shouldn’t have to do that.”

The new insulated doors accommodate high-mast and standard forklifts, opening just enough for each. Moving at 101 inches per second, the door is fully accessible in 2 seconds.

“It’s up and down very quickly—no more than 10 seconds open time,” Daniels says. “It’s plenty of time for our operators to get in and out, and we don’t lose nearly as much refrigeration.”

Elsewhere in the plant, the supplier’s doors are used to maintain room environments. The reliability of these fast-moving fabric panel doors is crucial to this operation.

“With the older roller-style doors on the freezer and throughout the plant, we were constantly, constantly calling in maintenance,” he says. “With these doors, we’ve had no failures.”

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