“Our warehouses allow flexible, mixed channel assignment for small, medium, and large formats of corrugated cardboard,” says Stephan Bruns, Sales Director Technologies and Systems at Westfalia.
Commercial space is precious. Manufacturers of corrugated cardboard and corrugated packaging need to store a wide variety of load units (LUs) – especially wide, narrow, high or low LUs – automatically and as compactly as possible.
Automation speeds up storage processes and thus also ties in high-performance production. This particularly compact automated storage is made possible by warehouse automation specialist Westfalia Technologies GmbH & Co. KG with its Savanna.NET® Warehouse Execution Software in conjunction with its storage and retrieval machines (SRM).
This automated storage system can compactly store and combine LU variants of different formats in storage compartments – just like in the classic video game “Tetris”.
For example, four LUs can be stored side by side in one storage compartment, three LUs with large overhangs or even wide LUs that require two pallets each as carriers – as well as other LUs multidimensionally in one compartment.
This compact storage is possible in an automated way because Savanna® knows the width of each LU to be stored. And it sorts them optimally into a multichannel compartment. Savanna.NET® also enables the SRMs to transport a wide variety of load units. Savanna® decides whether to store, retrieve or transport a single LU, two LUs side-by-side or a package of up to four load units, based on the goods expected.
The Westfalia systems are also capable of using a storage middle block between two SRMs in a highly flexible and continuous manner. There are no fixed boundaries in the storage channels. The SRMs can access all the different load units from both sides.
Savanna® forms the channel boundaries dynamically, depending on the required occupancy and the notified quantities of goods. It is therefore possible to alternate between short and long channels to give the SRMs involved the greatest possible flexibility in accessing the load units.
Westfalia Technologies will also be exhibiting at this year’s FEFCO Technical Seminar from October 25-27 in Lyon, France.
corruga.expert
