Tuesday, September 29, 2009
With a trend-setting logistics concept and the consolidation of four warehousing locations in one modern distribution center, the beverage company Wesergold raised its' performance greatly. For their partner, they chose SSI Schaefer Giebelstadt, whose idea to erect a high bay warehouse and connect the production lines through an electro monorail represents an efficient solution for the beverage industry.
Reduction of inventory, higher storage capacity, increased loading volume - by concentrating four warehouses in one new, central distribution warehouse the beverage company Wesergold raised its' distribution- and intra-logistics to a future oriented level. The new DC is at the largest production location of the Richard Hartinger Beverage Group in Rinteln. The center piece of the system is a modern, high performance high bay warehouse that is directly connected to the production lines through a transport bridge with an electro monorail. After an invitation to tender, the general contractor SSI Schaefer, Giebelstadt, was awarded the contract for the implementation planning, conveyor system, rack structure and the turn-key construction of the challenging project. "We developed our new logistics concept with a logistic planner," explains Wesergold logistics manager Stefan Kordes. "When it came to the realization partner we went with the best price-performance ratio. SSI Schaefer offered that."
With Joerg Wurlitzer managing the international sales and Michael Hoffmann managing sales in German-speaking countries, the company in Giebelstadt concentrated its' expertise with efficient solutions in the beverage industry in a separate business unit.
Numerous solutions for the beverage industry as well as a close collaboration with the subsidiary company "Schaefer Container Systems", a worldwide leading supplier of beverage containers, increased the high efficiency and added value
With a product line of approximately 1000 different juice and mineral water products, the Riha beverage group is one of the leading producers in Germany. The long-established company has six European production facilities. Their headquarters and largest production facility is located in Rinteln in the Weser Hills. South of the historic town situated on an area of more than 20 hectare there are 60,000 pallet storage positions, 80,000 square meters general storage area and a tank with a content of 27 million liters.. Most items produced there are designated for the markets in Germany, Denmark and the Benelux. "Especially during peak times, forwarding agents had to calculate longer waiting times" explains Stefan Kordes. "The throughput was not able to keep up with the constantly growing loading volume. After the so called summer of the century in 2006, when the demand threatened to exceed our possibilities, we therefore started planning a new, central warehouse complex."
The new, fully-automated high bay warehouse went into operation at the beginning of this year. With a footprint of just under 19,000 square meters and a height of more than 30 meters, the new distribution warehouse now shapes the silhouette of the production and warehouse location. The design of the racking built by SSI Schaefer is based on silo construction. It also reinforces the entire building which stands on a concrete slab up to one meter thick. Altogether 750 tons of steel were used for the structure this addes up to a shipping volume of more than 1,000 truck loads.
The high bay warehouse, equipped with a sprinkler system, offers space for single deep storing of 38,700 Euro-pallets. For this safeguard, SSI Schaefer installed approximately 21,000 sprinkler heads and more than 30,000 meters of plumbing. In case of emergency, the system will be fed by two separate water tanks. However, the striking highlights of the system are the automation and the challenging material flow concept that enabled the beverage company to gear its' throughput toward peak demand. "The entire inventory of almost 40,000 pallets can now be loaded onto trucks within three days", Stefan Kordes concludes proudly.
Schaefer based the ideal interaction of IT and automated components on simulation projects, this enables SSI Schaefer to generate an efficient flow of material. "Given the direct connection of production lines and the spectrum of pallet types used at Wesergold, which includes Euro-pallets as well as larger industrial-pallets and smaller "Duesseldorf" pallets, the project poses special challenges”, Gerd Klingert, project manager at SSI Schaefer assesses. Not only did the production facility have to be connected to the new high bay warehouse, but the conveyor system inside the production facility also had to be configured in such a way that the production lines were automatically merged to the electro monorail from two levels without creating a bottle neck for the flow of material. "We achieved this by integrating high-performance vertical conveyors that eventually consolidate the flow of pallets on one level," explains Gerd Klingert.
The electro monorail crosses the road and the outside area of the warehouse between the production facilities and the warehouse complex at a height of 15 meters. 650 tons of steel were used for static and enclosure of the bridge which has a volume of 860 cubic meter. It houses two strands of the electro monorail (EHB) which is equipped with a total of 76 vehicles. At a fully automated connection inside the production facility, the monorail is loaded with the consolidated, stretch-wrapped pallets each labeled with an EAN-code on both sides. Eight automatic labeling systems are installed at four storage lines emerging from production in Rinteln. The EHB transports the pallets to the storage positions of the high bay warehouse - or if necessary, from production to goods issuing via direct retrieval. At the high bay warehouse, the pallets are accepted by 14 storage and retrieval machines (SRM) and stored according to cutting-edge algorithms. "The goal was to optimize storing with the highest retrieval throughput in mind. It was accomplished that the SRMs will most likely be able to store and retrieve two pallets with each cycle," explains Gerd Klingert. "For this purpose all 14 SRMs are equipped with two load accepting forks each." In this manner the SRMs can store 450 pallets per hour and transport more than 600 pallets per hour to the goods issuing or order picking areas.
At the retrieval line of the HBW the pallets are transferred onto the conveyor system. This is done on two levels. Direct retrievals are allocated immediately on the ground floor. The upper retrieval level offers a second possibility; crossway-retrievals are integrated in the optimized flow of materials in line with the sequence by means of electro monorail and vertical conveyor.
A special feature is the retrieval of the paired-up Duesseldorf pallets. At production the two Duesseldorf pallets are placed onto a Euro-pallet and stored. To ship paired-up or individual Duesseldorf half-pallets, the Euro-pallets are de-stacked fully automatically and in compliance with the order. For this purpose, nine de-stackers were integrated in the flow of material. Full stacks of empty pallets are returned to production via a recycling loop. Alternatively, they can also be buffered in the HBW.
On the order picking level, the pallets are pre-picked according to the order, stretch-wrapped, labeled and stored in the high bay warehouse by the conveyor system. A modern, radio-frequency-based order picking system, a module of the warehouse management system ant® by SSI Schaefer,supports the employees. Alternatively, direct allocation can take place on the shipping level located on the ground floor. Special processes like the conversion of types is also done in the picking area. Here, for example, Euro-pallets are converted into paired-up Duesseldorf pallets and vice versa. These semi-automatic conversions are pre-planned and initiated by ant® specific to each order. For the execution, the employee can simply rely on the ant® radio-dialogs that display the necessary actions and checks according to the process.
Goods to be shipped are consolidated on lines located in the shipping area. For this purpose, the IT system recalls the respective order positions from the HBW, production or order picking. The decision to recall is made by the warehouse management system ant®. Apart from the algorithm of the rack, further sort criteria, decided by the customer and stored in the IT-system, is available. For example, the goods to be shipped per truck can be allocated according to the sequence of unloading points, according to height classification for truck-stability as well as item specific. At the same time the schedulers at Wesergold can control the allocation superimposing or temporarily deviating the customers pattern. "This offers us a maximum of flexibility," says Stefan Kordes, logistics manager at Wesergold.
"Such a flexible system for sequential retrieval normally means a significant loss of performance," explains Gerd Klingert. "Through the automation components used at Wesergold, like the conveyor system and the different options for the flow of material as well as the installed warehouse management and control systems, this challenge has been resolved ideally. Despite sequencing up to item level, the system features a remarkably high throughput." Furthermore, the controlled allocation of shipping pallets in the desired sequence reduces errors during loading and unloading to almost zero.
Further safety measures are installed in the goods issuing area at Wesergold. The supply for the trucks on the 14 loading bays is done by two lines of roller conveyors with a buffer area for 33 pallet. The roller conveyors transport the pallets to a link-belt. "The automated flow of material ends at the transfer positions of the altogether 28 buffer lines," explains Gerd Klingert. The personnel loading the trucks transfer the pallets with a lift truck. A separate feed conveyor with two lines (side loading) is designed for the transfer to a fork lifts with double load accepting devices. There, trucks that can be accessed from the side are loaded. Each fork lift can accept four pallets at a time and put them onto the loading space of the truck.
There are also some intresting factets in the laoding area. First, only the pallet that is to be loaded next will be allocated. The lift trucks are not permitted to access the other pallets located on the roller conveyor. Secondly, touch-screens that display outgoing goods are installed at the loading bays. Among other things, the screen displays the SSCCs and number of load units. Furthermore, the screen is linked to the scanner installed at the gate. This scanner records the barcode of each pallet as it passes through the gate. It checks the data, compares it to the order data and via the installed traffic light indicates okay to load or stop loading. This way, batch tracing by exact pallet can be ensured. After completion of the load process, the data is transferred to the host system, the delivery note is created and invoicing is initiated. "A 100 per cent control all the way into the truck," Stefan Kordes sums up. "The logistics system has met our high expectations and we are very happy with the result. Concentrating the external storage areas in one fully automated distribution center with state-of-the-art system components has increased our flexibility and performance significantly and also offers options for further stages of expansion."
SSI Schaefer ranks among the leading suppliers of warehousing and logistics systems worldwide. The services offered include concept determination, equipment of the warehouse with products of their own manufacture as well as the realization of complex logistics projects as a general contractor. The grouping of the competencies under the family brand SSI SCHAEFER generates the basis for developing market-driven, inter-branch warehousing systems and for designing integrated solutions of the intra-logistics.
Being a specialist for complex logistics systems, SSI Schaefer Noell GmbH in Giebelstadt, Germany, completes the service portfolio. As a general contractor the company already realized more than 300 logistics systems worldwide. The spectrum ranges from system planning and consultation, realization of turn-key systems to tailored after sales services.
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For more information please contact:
Travis A., Baker
704.731.1613
travis.baker@ssi-schaefer.us
Andrea Fellmann
49/9334/979-316
fellmann@ssi-schaefer-noell.com
Julia Windmueller
49/2735/70-395
julia.windmueller@ssi-schaefer.de
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