Pallet Pattern

Pallet pattern design directly affects two things manufacturers care about: how much product fits on a lorry, and whether that pallet survives transport without collapsing or shifting. A poorly designed pattern wastes space, meaning more lorries and higher transport cost for the same volume of product, while an unstable pattern risks damaged stock and safety issues in the warehouse or at the customer’s goods-in.

Because pattern design has direct cost implications at scale, many manufacturers use dedicated pallet pattern software to optimise layouts before committing them to a robot’s program, and will run several pattern options during a project to compare stability and pallet efficiency before selecting a final layout for production.

Pallet pattern software takes the case dimensions, weight, and the target pallet size (in the UK, commonly a 1200 x 1000mm pallet) and calculates layout options, typically aiming to interlock alternating layers, where each layer is rotated relative to the one below, to improve the load’s structural stability compared with simply stacking every layer identically.

Some patterns also build in air gaps for ventilation, where required for products like fresh produce, or specific edge overhangs to accommodate shrink-wrapping equipment downstream. Once a pattern is finalised, it is converted into a sequence of robot placement coordinates, either through the palletising robot manufacturer’s dedicated palletising software or a general offline programming tool, and loaded onto the robot controller as a program the robot runs repeatedly. Most systems support multiple pattern programs stored simultaneously, so an operator can switch between product lines or box sizes via the HMI without needing an engineer to reprogram the robot each time a product changes.