and retrieval system (AS/RS) that’s specifically designed to
provide dense storage in a small area.
UDDER PERFECTION
The AS/RS at FrieslandCampina’s Aalter facility does
more than simply store products. It also acts as a sorting
and order sequencing tool. When needed, the cranes are
instructed to gather pallets in sequence. These are
dropped off at output stations on the bottom level of the
system.
GOING WITH THE FLOW
The world’s fourth-largest dairy company,
FrieslandCampina is a cooperative of dairy farmers who
collectively produce more than 11. 7 billion liters (over 3 billion gallons) of milk each year. It also sells cheese, butter,
milk powder, and other dairy ingredients through its 18 different brands. The company manufactures its products in
22 facilities in seven European nations.
The Aalter facility is used to process milk and cream products, currently producing 360 million liters (about 95 million gallons) of milk each year. The milk
bottled at Aalter isn’t the fresh chilled milk
sold in the United States, however. Rather,
it’s what’s known as long-shelf-life milk—
milk that’s processed and packaged to stay
fresh at room temperature for months at a
time. At the plant, milk brought in from
the farms is pasteurized and homogenized
before being packaged in sterilized plastic
bottles, cartons, or small dairy cups for
coffee.
Once packaged, cases of products are
palletized using robotic systems. Lift
trucks then carry the pallets to a conveyor
that whisks the pallets through a tunnel
from the plant to the warehouse. Upon
arrival, the pallets are transferred to vertical lifts that raise them to conveyors for
transport to the input stations for the AS/RS.
To meet the facility’s throughput needs of 300 pallet
moves per hour, SSI Schaefer determined early on that the
AS/RS would require 11 aisles with 11 cranes. However, 11
aisles of double-deep storage would not easily fit into the
thin strip of land available for the building. The supplier
solved the problem by modifying the system so that it
rotates each pallet 90 degrees before placing it into storage.
By positioning the pallets sideways, it was able to reduce the
depth of each storage rack. This allowed it to fit the 11 aisles
and 24,640 total storage positions into double-deep racking
and still meet the throughput requirements.
A crane is located within each of the 11 aisles to gather the
incoming loads for putaway into the system’s 14 levels of
racking. Nine of the aisles hold ambient product, while the
remaining two aisles are used to store fresh milk and dairy
products produced at other facilities and brought to Aalter
for distribution. The ambient aisles store product two pallets
deep, while the refrigerated aisles are one pallet deep. Most
of the non-refrigerated milk products will remain in the
storage system up to two weeks before being shipped.
