Goods Shipped from the Carousel

April 30 , 2004

SSI Schäfer Noell installs Schäfer Carousel System (SCS). As a sequencing buffer, the high-dynamics, fully automatic carousel system at Würth Industrie Service GmbH & Co. KG will in future ensure a further increase in process quality and reliability in the outgoing goods department.

SSI Schäfer Noell GmbH, Giebelstadt, as general contractor, recently executed a special kind of order at Würth Industrie Service GmbH & Co. KG in Bad Mergentheim. "For the further optimisation of our logistics centre, we are relying on a dynamic materials-handling warehousing system", explains Frank Freudenberger, head of Kanban Logistics at Würth Industrie Service. "We can use this to make ideal use of the existing space, buffer a wide range of articles in as small a space as possible and at the same time take the strain off the existing materials-handling system." The warehouse engineering specialists from Franconia in Germany were awarded the contract for planning and installing the required high-dynamics circulating system. Würth decided in favour of one of the new, fully automatic Schäfer Carousel Systems (SCS). A special feature of this job: the particular configuration of the system. In Bad Mergentheim the carousel system, which was developed together with the customer in order to meet his requirements, is used as an innovative, high-performance warehousing and order-picking buffer.

Conventional carousel systems - equipped with storage aisles and possibly a platform lift - are considered to be slow control and storage systems. For this reason, one of the manually operated systems commonly available on the market at the moment, where order pickers remove and replace the goods directly in the carousel storage compartments, hardly appeared suitable for the range of tasks required by Würth. To implement the expected sharp increase in productivity, therefore, Würth is relying on the SCS by SSI Schäfer . The fully automatic SCS combines the advantages of compact carousel systems with those of further automation. For example, the SCS at Würth offers very high acceleration rates and speeds with simultaneous storage in as small a space as possible.

For - like an automatic store for small parts - the SCSs by SSI Schäfer are operated by fully automatic, so-called cams with load pick-up devices. In this way, order-pickers can be supplied with orders in any horizontal or vertical location by means of a materials-handling circuit. In this way, the carousel conveyors going into operation at Würth in the middle of the year as order-picking and production buffers have logically and completely implemented the principle of goods to man. At the same time, the systems offer a high level of flexibility, optimum availability and the fast processing of a high throughput volume.

Since 1999, the subsidiary of the Würth Group has been on the market in its own right. As a system supplier and service provider, the company supplies about 8,000 customers from the industry with C parts. But Würth Industrie Service, by arrangement with more than 1,300 suppliers, is not only responsible for procuring and storing the small parts. With customer-specific supply concepts for consumer materials, the service provider also guarantees substantial process rationalisation effects for its customers, in the fields of purchasing, logistics and quality assurance. More than 115,000 articles - consumer materials for production requirements, small parts and assembly materials for systems engineering as well as operating resources for maintenance requirements - are in stock on over 30,000 square metres in the Kanban logistics centre at the Bad Mergentheim location. Now that the production facilities have been ideally organised with the construction of a new warehouse and the installation of modern Kanban logistics, the SCS is now intended to increase productivity in compiling orders and sorting goods in the outgoing goods department at Würth.

The background to the development of the new SCS was, on the one hand, the realisation that order and batch sizes were atomising. On the other hand, the efficient "dip into the box", particularly in the small parts sector with a random selection of articles, is only possible with the human hand. Accordingly, the new SSI development aims at a further optimisation of the order-picking principle of "goods to man". The standard version of the compact SCS consists of four carousels with up to 6,000 container spaces. In vertical and/or horizontal circuits, a total of up to 1,000 double cycles per hour, insertion into and removal from the containers, can be carried out from the four aisles by means of one cam each with load pick-up device - about twice the performance capacity of conventional systems.

These are advantages which also quickly convinced the decision-makers at Würth. There, however, the four carousel storage systems are used less as order-picking systems and more as sequencing buffer systems. As a special solution for compiling and sorting orders in the outgoing goods department, the SCS in the Kanban logistics centre at Würth is integrated directly in the existing materials handling process. There it offers maximum storage capacity in the smallest of spaces: with this compact system, Würth has 3,800 storage spaces at its disposal. In addition to goods leaving the warehouse directly, orders distributed over 1-2 days are buffered there for order-picking. On the one hand, surface area-intensive sorting lines can be dispensed with in the outgoing goods department in this way. On the other hand, entire orders can now be sequenced, that is, called off according to the customer sequence actually required. The call-off cycles can be freely selected at any time; furthermore, the compilations of the orders and their sequence can also be flexibly modified in retrospect.

Würth stores the articles on plastic trays. When the relevant C-parts are called off, up to 1,000 trays per hour are removed fully automatically by means of the circuits immanent in the system. Finally, the required articles are transferred at one of four so-called stations. There the operator is guided automatically by means of the "ant" inventory management system, which is also installed by SSI Schäfer Noell. "ant" also makes all information of the SCS available at all times, for example access data, fullness and special storage parameters. This provides an ideal basis for consistent inventory management, permanent inventory and a large number of statistical data records.

Another advantage of this solution: Despite considerable savings in deployment areas, Würth can dispense with an additional manual sorting level for palletising. Thanks to the absence of travel times and the fact that conveyors are no longer needed, the compacting of the storage volume also leads to considerable savings in the transport sector. Furthermore, it is also possible to use the SCS temporarily to keep empty containers ready for order-picking. As an additional option, the system can also fully automatically return empty article trays to the existing materials-handling system. "With the use of the powerful Schäfer Carousel System, we expect a significant increase in productivity in the outgoing goods department from the beginning of the year", Mr Freudenberger concludes. "The advantages of the computer-aided system are not only to be found at the level of in-company benefits, but above all in its contribution to the further expansion of our customer orientation."

Portrait of SSI Schäfer Noell

SSI Schäfer Noell is one of the leading suppliers of complex logistics systems worldwide. As a general contractor, the company has already installed more than 250 logistics systems throughout the whole world. The services offered by SSI Schäfer Noell range from system planning and consulting through the realization of turnkey installations to tailor-made after-sales services. SSI Schäfer Noell has its headquarters in Giebelstadt, Germany, and currently has a workforce of more than 300 employees.

Portrait of the SSI Schäfer Group

The SSI Schäfer Group is one of the leading suppliers worldwide of complete, high-quality product systems. It comprises SSI Schäfer/Fritz Schäfer, all-in service provider for warehouse and plant equipment, waste engineering and recycling as well as office supplies, SSI Schäfer Noell, supplier of complex logistics systems and SSI Schäfer Peem, specialist in materials storage, handling and order-picking technology. The SSI Schäfer Group has 53 branch offices worldwide and employs a staff of 7,500. At the headquarters in Neunkirchen, 1,700 persons are employed.

Source: Schaefer Noell

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