DC Velocity - October 2011

Today, beverages bottled at the nearby plant are placed on pallets and transported via monorail to the warehouse. Once they arrive, a lift raises them to a pallet conveyor for transport to the AS/RS. Additional lifts hoist the pallets to transfer stations served by one of the cranes. The crane then moves front to back down the aisle until it comes to a channel. Unlike conventional AS/RS racks, which are one pallet deep, these channels hold 10 pallets apiece.

A transfer shuttle attached to the crane next moves beneath the load and lifts it off the crane carrier. It then travels down the desired channel perpendicular to the aisle until it reaches the last available space, where it deposits the pallet. The transfer shuttle then returns to the crane. Typically, only one SKU resides in each lane to avoid the need to move pallets to get to a trapped SKU.

The crane then either collects another inbound load or gathers a pallet needed to fill orders. In total, the system handles 350 pallets an hour—typically, 250 an hour from the nearby production plant and another 100 or so that arrive by truck from other production facilities.

Products that will ship as full pallets are brought to the lifts and lowered to pallet conveyors for transport to outbound dispatch areas. Pallets needed to replenish case picking are sent to the new picking area designed by Krones. The picking area consists of three lanes, each serviced by a shuttle crane. Each crane can serve two levels of racking, running between the two rows of racks.

Most products are placed into the pick faces on the bot-
tom levels of the lanes (there are six pick faces in total).
Each lane has a gravity conveyor to move items to the front
of the rack for easy picking. Fast-moving products desig-
nated for reserve storage are deposited in the top layer of
the rack by the shuttle crane. When a pick slot below emp-
ties out, the crane moves a pallet from the top level to the
bottom level to replenish that slot.

CLEAR DIRECTION

As for the results of the project, the retrofit has allowed Hassia to achieve its objective of consolidating products from both Bad Vilbel and Rosbach into the new AS/RS. Coincidentally, the company was also able to close the production facility in Rosbach and instead pipe the water from the Rosbach spring to the Bad Vilbel production plant.

In addition, labor has been reduced, and productivity is up. Customer service has also improved. A truck can pull into the dock, drop off its load of returnable bottles, pick up a new load, and be on its way within 45 minutes.

“We achieved our goals, including the speed of loading and reliability to [meet] our customers’ needs,” says Marhold. “It was a very tight relationship working together. Krones had very smart ideas that they brought in, and we also had ideas. It was a very interactive approach. We would never have met the timeline we had without that coordination.” ;

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