Project Report STILL fork-lift trucks Service center Hamburg
by Dipl.-Ing. (FH) Dieter Klug
More than 5 million motor-driven fork-lift trucks are used in German industry. Still as one of the branch leaders in Germany employs 750 service technicians. They are supplied overnight with spare parts from the new service center in Hamburg.
The forwarding agent disposing of a duplicate key packs all components that were ordered online the day before, into the car of the technician by 6 o’clock.
The new logistics center - equipped with the warehouse management system (WMS) “iWACS” and the control post software “iVIEW” by Klug - consists of a truck-served pallet high bay warehouse, a fully automatic small parts store as well as of a comprehensive conveyor system to integrate a total of 15 multi-functional workstations that can freely be used for picking, goods receipt and quality assurance. The new system offers a lot of advantages for Still:
- Klug’s warehouse management system “iWACS” renders t he WMS independent of the host
- remote maintenance of the automated elements with the aid of Klug’s software for visualisation and diagnosis “iVIEW”
- precise statistics to plan the use of personnel in an optimal way
- transparent tracking of shipments
- high pick and pack performance per capita with a low fault rate
- 70 % of the ordered spare parts arrive one day earlier
The central spare parts store increases the service to deliver and reduces costs
“iWACS”, the WMS, manages the truck-served pallet store and the automatic small parts store
All of Still’s 1,500 service technicians throughout Europe dispose of a laptop. By entering the type number of a fork-lift truck, they will have displayed only those spare parts that were mounted in this specific truck. This accelerates the selection of spare parts and avoids faults that could arise before by selecting inadequate variants - e. g. after a modification in construction.
The 750 German service technicians order in the afternoon via modem the spare parts required the next day. The host accepts these orders automatically and transmits the data to the WMS that is important for the logistical process.
The WMS sorts the picking orders immediately according to their priority so that orders for locations far away will be completed earlier than those nearer by.
Moreover, the WMS optimises the distances of trucks in the high bay warehouse, in the picking area and of the automatic cranes in the small parts store. A lot of orders contain only few parts that are stored in the small parts store. These are picked at the three picking stations directly in the preparation zone of the small parts store.
A special feature: combined workstations for picking, goods receipt and quality assurance
Small shipments are picked at three stations in front of the small parts store
The trays carry 1 large storage box,
2 half, 4 quarter resp. 8 boxes.
During the picking procedure,
the WMS displays the correct box.
Pick performance per capita in
different areas (left: small parts store)
More comprehensive orders, e.g. for other branches, are picked at the picking stations in the dispatch area. There, the goods from the small parts store and the pallet as well as from the special stores are held available at the combined picking and packing stations via the conveyor system, and larger parts by the trucks. Then they are packed into ready-to-use reusable boxes.
iWACS, the WMS, optimises all distances and communicates with Still’s navigation system for the fork-lift trucks. That Still used iWACS instead of the warehouse management system distributed by themselves is related to the complexity of the system, but also to the given interaction of the WMS and the control post software “iVIEW”.
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D-92552 Teunz
Phone: 96 71/92 16-0
Fax: 96 71/92 16-12
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Website: www.klug-is.com