Systems and methods of decanting inventory products from cases at a retail facility

A system for decanting inventory products from cases at a retail facility, the system comprising:

• a loading zone configured to receive product cases, each product case containing a quantity of a product;
• a plurality of decanting stations, each decanting station having at least one container associated therewith, each container having an amount of available space for receiving at least one product;
• a decanting transport system comprising a conveyor having a product advancement surface configured to transport the product cases from the loading zone to the decanting stations, the decanting transport system comprising one or more sensors configured to obtain information relating to the product cases as they are conveyed by the conveyor;
• a control unit operatively coupled to the decanting transport system and configured to control movement of the conveyor;
• and
• a control circuit communicatively coupled to the control unit, the control circuit being configured to:
• receive, from the one or more sensors, information relating to a plurality of product cases conveyed by the conveyor;
• select a subset of product cases from the plurality of product cases, wherein the subset comprises at least two product cases from the plurality of product cases;
• apply a container-packing algorithm to the subset of product cases and the containers at the decanting stations to determine a minimum number of containers needed to decant all of the products in the subset of product cases into the containers based on a projected utilization of each container, the projected utilization of each container being determined by the control circuit based on one or more dimensions of the products and an optimal packing configuration of the products when the products are stacked in the containers, wherein the optimal packing configuration is a projected packing configuration having a greatest height of the products in the container, with a maximum height being a height of the container, and a lowest area of the products in the container;
• assign each product case in the subset to one of the plurality of decanting stations based on the optimal packing configurations of the products in the containers;
• cause the conveyor to divert each product case in the subset to its assigned decanting station;
• and
• cause the conveyor to recirculate non-selected ones of the plurality of product cases for selection into a subsequent subset of product cases.