DC Velocity - November 2010

materialhandlingupdate AUTOMATED SYSTEMS

“The advantage for us of using a high-bay AS/RS is that it would require 750,000 square feet of traditional space to house what we can put into that 165,000 square feet,” says Mark Warcholski, the company’s director of warehouse operations.

The AS/RS was built as a rack-supported addition, meaning the roof actually rests on the top of the racking and the shell of the building was erected around the rack structure. The system, which Daifuku customized for its client, features 11 stories of racking reaching a total height of 100 feet. The aisles within the system vary in length, with the longest aisle running 675 feet and the shortest 570 feet. Because the addition had to be constructed to fit the available land, the system’s configuration was largely dictated by the space constraints.

Not only is the new addition space efficient, it’s also a showpiece of eco-friendly construction. The racking was fabricated from 82 percent recycled steel. Solar panels will soon be mounted on the roof; recycled well water is being used for irrigation around the building; and the parking lot incorporates recycled concrete from a nearby freeway project. Since no humans need to enter the AS/RS area, it can operate with the lights out, which yields substantial savings in energy.

In August, Meyer was able to consolidate the inventory
from the five satellite facilities into the AS/RS, and there’s
still plenty of room to spare. Right now, the company is
using only about 55 percent of the system’s storage capaci-
ty. It hopes to use some of its excess capacity to provide
third-party logistics services for other companies.

Picks and pans

Now that the AS/RS is in operation, the receiving, putaway, and retrieval processes unfold in a tightly choreographed sequence. As container-loads of merchandise arrive from overseas, the products are unloaded, labeled, palletized onto plastic pallets, and shrink wrapped for optimal handling by the automated systems. Lift trucks then gather the pallets and take them to drop-off stations in the high-bay area. (Meyer’s plans call for replacing the lift trucks with automatic guided vehicles by the middle of next year.)

Before entering the AS/RS, the pallets first go through a load sizing and identification area to ensure they will fit in the racks and are configured properly to avoid jamming the system. Pallets that fail to meet the specifications for size, weight, and so forth are rejected to two work stations or a “jackpot” lane, where workers make needed adjustments.

Once a load passes the sizing area, it moves on to a pickup station, where one of four Sorting Transfer Vehicles (STVs), also supplied by Daifuku, collects the pallet. The STVs, which run on a 500-foot looped rail that passes in front of each of the system’s 12 aisles, move the loads to the ends of their assigned aisles. Storage assignments are made by Daifuku’s

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