Features/Benefits Provided: Provided accurate job status reporting to printer's customer representatives Eliminated WIP product retrieval time for fork trucks Reduce expensive reprints Provided control redundancy

After receiving a large national magazine's print order, a leading U.S. printer needed to add production equipment to one of their largest North American printing plants. However, the land available on this site was not suitable to support good material flow.

The solution was to build an automated high-rise warehouse to consolidate all work-in-progress pallets into one high cube structure. This opened enough floor space to add the necessary bindery equipment within existing buildings. The supplier's scope was to provide an Automated Storage and Retrieval System (AS/RS) and a plant wide Material Tracking and Control System (MTC).

Work-in-process pallets are built at the end of a press. The assigned fork truck drivers retrieve the pallets via RF terminals on-board the trucks. In real-time, MTC determines whether the pallet is required in the bindery or destined for the AS/RS and queued for later consumption. In shipping, the MTC tracks all pallets loaded into a particular truck and creates a manifest when truck loading concludes. The MTC System also orchestrates the movement of over 30/shift fork truck drivers within this million sq ft plant.

The high-rise warehouse includes 3 Unit Load Storage and Retrieval Machines designed to handle 3500 lb of product on a captive pallet. Designed and built by the supplier, the high density storage system is a rack supported structure. The storage consists of 3 aisles of double deep rack containing approximately 16,000 pallets of work-in-process materials. The combination of high density storage and a plant-wide control system significantly reduced direct material handling labor providing ample room for future growth.

is a Proud Member of the AS/RS Product Section of Material Handling Industry of America

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