PALLET GRADING & SORTING.

An enclosed AI vision booth that grades and sorts pallets in motion — in under 20 milliseconds, with edge inference, controlled lighting, and a record of every disposition. For pallet manufacturers, recyclers, and the warehouses that receive their pallets.

Live
Grade every pallet. •  Sort at line speed. •  One standard. Every shift. •  Grade every pallet. •  Sort at line speed. •  One standard. Every shift. • 
Why This Matters

A pallet is the cheapest part of your operation.
And the most expensive when it's wrong.

The Shift That Graded Differently
Two graders. Two standards. The same pallet gets called Grade A on Tuesday and Grade B on Thursday. Your customer notices.
The Premium You Gave Away
A Grade A pallet sorted into the Grade B lane is money you handed back. Mis-grades silently erode margin one stack at a time.
The Bottleneck at the Grader
Your line moves as fast as one person looking at one pallet. Throughput stalls every time a grader steps away or slows down.
The Defect That Slipped Through
A cracked stringer, a missing block, a broken bottom board. Manual grading misses what cameras catch. The rejection comes back later, on someone else's clock.
The Wrong Pallet on the Wrong Truck
A CHEP got mixed in with the white-wood. A 48×40 was loaded as a 48×42. Customer-facing errors that never should have left your sort lane.
The Labor You Can't Hire
Skilled graders are scarce, expensive, and hard to retain. The job is repetitive, inconsistent, and a constant turnover risk you cannot afford.
The Pool Pallet Rental You Overpaid
CHEP and PECO bill on what enters your facility. Without a record of which pool pallets actually arrived — and in what condition — you're paying rental on pallets you cannot verify.
The AS/RS That Jammed at 2am
A cracked block. A protruding nail. A pallet you never inspected. Your high-bay stopped, the retrieval was stuck, and a forklift driver had to climb up to clear it.
<20ms
Inspection latency. Decisions arrive at the diverter before the pallet does.
>95%
Accuracy on full-surface AI inspection — top, sides, bottom, blocks, structure.
24/7
Continuous, in-motion grading at line speed. No fatigue. No shift-to-shift drift.
No one means to ship a bad pallet.
And no one means to receive one.
"The cost isn't the pallet. The cost is what the pallet did to the next system — the AS/RS, the customer, the audit. That's the part that doesn't show up on a P&L until it already happened."
Operations Director, Distribution & Logistics
Pallet quality is a hand-off problem. The producer grades and ships. The recycler grades and reroutes. The warehouse receives, stores, and retrieves. Every hand-off is also a quality decision — made by a different person, on a different shift, with no record. The VisionCell Q7 is the same standard at every hand-off: in the manufacturing plant, on the recycling line, and at the receiving dock. One judgment, repeated identically, every pallet, every time.
// VisionCell Q7

An enclosed AI booth.
Mounted in your sort line.

zira. 3,891 mm · 153" 2,376 mm · 94" 2,032 mm · 80"
Cameras
4 – 7
Max Pallet
60 × 60"
Latency
< 20 ms

A controlled environment for industrial AI vision.

The VisionCell Q7 is a fully enclosed inspection booth that integrates inline with your existing conveyor. Multi-camera AI capture with controlled lighting. On-device inference. A grading and sorting decision before the pallet leaves the booth.

4–7 synchronized AI cameras

Full-surface coverage: top, sides, bottom, blocks, and structural inference. Every pallet seen from every angle, every time.

Controlled internal illumination

Enclosed steel/aluminum frame removes ambient lighting variance. Same scene, same exposure, every pallet — the foundation of consistent AI grading.

On-device edge AI inference

Decisions are made locally — no round-trip to the cloud. Sub-20ms latency means the diverter has the call before the pallet reaches it.

Inline conveyor integration

Drops into existing pallet sort lines. Continuous, in-motion inspection — no stop-and-pose, no bottleneck at the booth.

The Decision Engine

Four buckets. One source of truth.

Every pallet that passes through the booth gets a real-time disposition driven by attribute-based logic and configurable business rules. A 48×40 7T 4W 3S goes one way. A damaged stringer-class goes another. The same rules, applied the same way, every shift.

// 01 · Accept

Reuse-ready

Pallet meets all structural and surface specs. Correct dimensions, intact boards, clean surface, no integrity issues. Routes to outbound stack or back into circulation.

Routes → outbound lane
// 02 · Repair

Salvageable

Recoverable defects detected: missing or cracked board, loose nail, minor stringer damage. Routes to the repair line with a per-pallet defect record.

Routes → repair line
// 03 · Dismantle

Recoverable lumber

Beyond economic repair, but boards and stringers retain value. Routes to dismantling for component reclaim.

Routes → dismantle station
// 04 · Scrap

End of life

Severe rot, decay, structural failure, or insect damage. No recoverable value. Routes to scrap with disposition logged for audit.

Routes → scrap lane
// Live Disposition Feed
streaming
P-08821 · 48×40 · 7T 4W 3S · CHEP Accept → Lane 1
P-08822 · 48×40 · 5T 3W 3S · custom Repair → Lane 3
P-08823 · 48×42 · 7T 5W 3S · PECO Accept → Lane 2
P-08824 · 48×40 · stringer · custom Dismantle → Lane 4
P-08825 · 48×40 · 7T 4W 3S · CHEP Accept → Lane 1
P-08826 · 40×48 · stringer · custom Scrap → Lane 5
P-08827 · 48×40 · 7T 4W 3S · CHEP Repair → Lane 3
68%
Accept
22%
Repair
7%
Dismantle
3%
Scrap
1,847
Pallets / shift
// What It Sees

Two layers of vision.
Structure and condition.

Structural & Configuration
// What it is
  • Top boards, bottom boards, stringers — counted, located, classified
  • Board spacing and thickness measured against spec tolerances
  • Dimensions (L × W × H) verified per pallet, in motion
  • Entry type — 2-way / 4-way / winged / notched
  • Pallet model identification — CHEP, PECO, custom, stringer
  • Attribute-based classification like 48×40 7T 4W 3S, with configurable rules
Quality & Defect
// What is wrong with it
  • Missing or broken boards, stringers, blocks
  • Cracks and splits across decking and structure
  • Nail integrity issues — protrusion, missing, loose, wrong placement
  • Rot, decay, insect damage at the surface and around fasteners
  • Surface anomalies and wear patterns indicating fatigue or contamination
  • Overall structural inference beyond what any single defect predicts
Structure tells the system what the pallet is. Condition tells it where the pallet should go.
// System Outputs & Integration

Decisions don't just display.
They drive the line.

VisionCell Q7 is built to integrate. Every decision is exposed as a sortable signal — drive a diverter, route a robotic arm, print a label, log a record. The grading happens once. The downstream automation responds in real time.

Sorting signals

Real-time disposition pushed to your line: relay outputs, PLC integration, or REST/API calls. Built to speak to whatever you already have.

RelayPLCAPI

Lane routing decisions

Per-pallet lane assignment delivered before the pallet reaches the diverter. Multi-lane sort lines, robotic arms, and gating automation respond in sub-20ms.

DivertersRobotic armsMulti-lane

Sticker & label generation

Per-pallet labels with grade, attributes, and ID — printed and applied automatically. Traceable from sort line to outbound dock.

GradeIDAttributes

QA reports per pallet

Every pallet generates a structured record: ID, model, attributes, defects, disposition, timestamp. Audit trail for every disposition the system makes.

Per-palletAuditableSearchable

Digital catalog

Every pallet model, attribute combination, and disposition stored in a searchable catalog. The first time you can actually answer "what came through last Tuesday?"

SearchableHistoricalPer-pallet

Throughput & performance analytics

Real-time production visibility, quality grading analytics, throughput monitoring, operator performance, historical traceability per pallet.

ThroughputQuality mixOperator
New Pallet Manufacturing

Grade and verify at end-of-line.

In new pallet production, the booth verifies what came off the assembly line: dimensions on spec, all boards present, fasteners correct, surface clean. Reject what shouldn't ship before it gets stacked, shrink-wrapped, and loaded.

  • Verify dimensional consistency on every pallet, every shift
  • Catch missing boards, stringers, and protruding nails before stacking
  • Confirm pallet model and configuration matches the order
  • Generate per-pallet QA records tied to production batches
  • Drive automated divert for rework before pallets reach the wrap station
  • Hold the same standard across every shift, with no operator variance
Get a Demo for Manufacturers →
// End-of-Line Inspection
Pallet model · 48×40 4W 7TMatch
Dimensional checkPass
Board count · top deck7/7
Broken board · position 3Reject
Nail protrusionNone
Surface qualityPass
Stringer integrityReview
96.4%
First-pass yield
61
Rejected
1,712
Inspected
Pallet Recycling & Repair

Replace the bottleneck at the grader.

Manual grading is the slowest, most variable point in a recycling operation. The booth performs that decision automatically, in motion, with zero variance — and routes pallets to the right downstream lane: reuse, repair, dismantle, or scrap.

Front End

Incoming Sort & Grade

Inspect pallets as they arrive. Drive consistent grading and routing across every shift, every operator, every batch.

Back End

Repaired Pallet QC

Re-inspect repaired pallets before shipment. Verify the repair worked. Catch missed defects. Build trust in your recycled output.

Get a Demo for Recyclers →
// Incoming Disposition Stream
P-04482 · 48×40 · CHEPAccept → Reuse
P-04483 · 48×40 · customRepair → Lane 3
P-04484 · 40×48 · stringerDismantle
P-04485 · 48×40 · PECOAccept → Reuse
P-04486 · 48×42 · customScrap
P-04487 · 48×40 · 7T 4W 3SRepair → Lane 3
// End-of-Line · Repaired QC
Replacement board placementPass
Fastener verificationReject
Structural integrityPass
Warehouse / DC / Manufacturer (Inbound)

Stop bad pallets at the dock door.

When a pallet enters your facility, it enters your automation. A jammed AS/RS, a high-bay incident, a stuck retrieval — each one started as a pallet that should never have been received. The VisionCell Q7 puts an inspection checkpoint between your supplier and your storage system, so only qualified pallets ever reach the racks.

  • Protect AS/RS uptime. Eliminate poor-quality pallets before they enter automated storage and retrieval — the leading cause of unplanned downtime in high-bay operations
  • Score every supplier. Build a per-supplier quality record. Drive accountability up the chain with data, not anecdotes
  • Protect workers. Reduce high-bay incidents and protruding-nail injuries by stopping the hazard at receiving, before it gets racked
  • Verify pool pallet billing. Confirm CHEP, PECO, and other pooled pallets at the door — only pay rental on pallets that actually arrived in usable condition
  • Reduce slave-board dependency. Better incoming pallet quality means less reliance on captive boards in your retrieval system — faster cycles, better racking utilization
  • Handle multiple pallet types. Stringer, block, perimeter, tunnel, 48×40, 48×42, custom — one inspection standard across every induction point
Get a Demo for Warehouses & DCs →
// Supplier Quality Scorecard · Last 30 days
Supplier A — Northern Pallet
4,212 pallets · 3.1% reject
96.9%
A
Supplier B — CHEP (pooled)
6,508 pallets · 4.4% reject
95.6%
A
Supplier C — Eastside Lumber
3,841 pallets · cracked stringers, loose nails
88.2%
B
Supplier D — Regional Recycler
2,104 pallets · rot, broken bottom boards
76.4%
C
// AS/RS Protection — This Shift
Pallets inspected before induction 3,247
Rejected at receiving 147
Estimated AS/RS jams prevented 12
The Standard
01The pallet got graded. Just not the same way it was graded yesterday.
02A Grade A went out the Grade B lane. You handed back the premium and never knew.
03The AS/RS jammed at 2am. A bad pallet caused it. The pallet was never inspected.
04The defect was visible. To a camera. The grader was tired. It was the end of the shift.
05The supplier kept shipping bad pallets. Without data, the conversation never happened.
06Hiring graders is hard. Keeping them consistent is harder. Replacing variance with a system is the only honest answer.
07Imagine grading every pallet the same way. Every shift. Every dock. Every lane.
08One standard, applied identically. From the line that builds them to the dock that receives them.
One standard.
Every pallet.

Pallet quality is a hand-off problem. The VisionCell Q7 is the same standard at every hand-off — in the manufacturing plant, on the recycling line, and at the receiving dock. One judgment, applied identically, with a record of every decision.

See It Live → Explore the Q7
Or reach us directly  ·  sales@zira.us  ·  650-701-7026
Zira