Automated warehouse from kitchen manufacturer

The order pick­ing ware­house of the French kitchen man­u­fac­tur­er Schmidt Groupe S.A.S. has now been auto­mat­ed by Demat­ic at its site in Lièpvre in Alsace. The sup­pli­er of automa­tion tech­nol­o­gy devel­oped a space-sav­ing solu­tion for this, con­sist­ing of a mul­ti­shut­tle sys­tem for mul­ti­ple-deep stor­age on around 6,000 stor­age loca­tions as well as spe­cial con­tain­er con­vey­or tech­nol­o­gy. With­in the mul­ti­shut­tle sys­tem, twelve shut­tles take over order sequenc­ing. The con­vey­or sys­tem trans­ports the request­ed items to the var­i­ous work sta­tions. In this way, the Demat­ic solu­tion enables com­plete automa­tion of the pre­vi­ous­ly man­u­al stor­age and retrieval as well as pick­ing of goods and the entire mate­r­i­al flow. 

“With the Demat­ic Mul­ti­shut­tle, speed, stor­age den­si­ty, accu­ra­cy and avail­abil­i­ty with­in the pick­ing ware­house can be sig­nif­i­cant­ly increased. In addi­tion, the over­all sys­tem enables high through­put rates as well as error-free pick­ing, thus guar­an­tee­ing us effi­cient and reli­able order processing.”

- Boris Her­rmann, Process Manager

With its indi­vid­ual kitchens, the kitchen man­u­fac­tur­er is one of the inter­na­tion­al mar­ket lead­ers for fur­ni­ture pro­duc­tion and sales. At the Alsace site, for exam­ple, side pan­els, doors, fit­tings and han­dles are stored and assem­bled accord­ing to cus­tomer spec­i­fi­ca­tions. To make these intral­o­gis­tics process­es more effec­tive, the com­pa­ny decid­ed to auto­mate the mate­r­i­al flow in Lièpvre. 

Order assem­bly starts at the small parts work­sta­tions. There, employ­ees use a pick-by-light sys­tem to indi­vid­u­al­ly load car­tons with the request­ed items. These are then trans­port­ed to the sub­se­quent sta­tions using spe­cial roller and belt con­vey­ors. If larg­er items need to be added to an order, the small parts car­ton is loaded onto a tray and stored or buffered in the Demat­ic Mul­ti­shut­tle ware­house. On twelve lev­els, this pro­vides space for 5,760 stor­age loca­tions. With­in the Mul­ti­shut­tle sys­tem, a dozen shut­tles take over auto­mat­ic order sequenc­ing as well as stor­age, trans­fer and retrieval. The con­vey­or sys­tem then trans­ports the filled totes and trays to the oth­er work sta­tions. A con­tin­u­ous scale checks the weight. Once the order is com­plete, the sequenced totes are checked, the car­tons are closed, and ship­ping labels are applied. 

When the order is com­plet­ed, the small parts car­ton is loaded onto a tray and stored or buffered in the Demat­ic Mul­ti­shut­tle ware­house. On twelve lev­els, this pro­vides space for 5,760 stor­age loca­tions. With­in the Mul­ti­shut­tle sys­tem, a dozen shut­tles take over auto­mat­ic order sequenc­ing as well as stor­age, trans­fer and retrieval. The con­vey­or sys­tem then trans­ports the filled totes and trays to the oth­er work sta­tions. A con­tin­u­ous scale checks the weight. Once the order is com­plete, the sequenced totes are checked, the car­tons are closed and ship­ping labels are applied. 

The com­pa­ny has also installed a WMS (Ware­house Man­age­ment Sys­tem) that opti­mal­ly man­ages inven­to­ries and orders accord­ing to ABC assign­ment. The WinCC process visu­al­iza­tion sys­tem devel­oped by Siemens was also inte­grat­ed into the solu­tion to mon­i­tor the tech­ni­cal process­es. It enables a sim­ple and clear infor­ma­tion flow of all accru­ing data and func­tions as a user inter­face, as Thomas Mey­er-Jan­der, Direc­tor EMEA and Head of Mar­ket­ing & Com­mu­ni­ca­tions, explains:

“In this way, users have access to the cur­rent oper­at­ing sta­tus at all times and can use this data to derive opti­miza­tion mea­sures for bet­ter per­for­mance.” The Schmidt Groupe’s sum­ma­ry is cor­re­spond­ing­ly pos­i­tive. Her­rmann sum­ma­rizes, “Our goals in terms of through­put and deliv­ery accu­ra­cy were more than met. With the com­pa­ny, we have found the right provider for us thanks to their intral­o­gis­tics know-how and expe­ri­ence. The coop­er­a­tion is coop­er­a­tive and char­ac­ter­ized by a spir­it of partnership.”