Views
6 years ago

f+h Intralogistics 4/2014

  • Text
  • Fuh
  • Intralogistics
f+h Intralogistics 4/2014

Warehousing High-tech

Warehousing High-tech distribution center for dairy products by SSI Schaefer For the “Mega Factory“ of Vinamilk Ben Cat district facility, the leading dairy company in Vietnam, SSI Schaefer has implemented one of the most modern distribution centers in the country. A high-bay warehouse and conveying system with tailored system components, efficient material flows with the first electric rail-guided vehicle system in Southeast Asia as well as the intelligent logistics software offer continuous automated processes with high capacity throughput. Until now, such a distribution center did not exist in Vietnam. High-ranking government representatives attended the official opening of the new distribution center in July 2013 signifying the importance of the project in the South-Vietnamese province of Binh Duong. On an area of more than 20 ha, the Viet Nam Dairy Products Joint Stock Company (Vinamilk) built its first “Mega Factory” in the My Phuoc Industrial Park. 400 million liters of milk are processed at the production site every year. In April 2014, they have furthermore started producing baby food. The production volume shall be increased to 800 million liters until 2015. “With this factory, one of the most modern dairy distribution centers in the world is here,” proudly emphasizes Vietnams Vice Premier Hoang Trung Hai during the opening ceremony. In fact, the production volume of the “Mega Factory” can cover a large portion of the liquid milk demand for the entire Vietnamese market. The factory is fully automated from goods receiving of the milk and base materials up to end-product storage. “Controlled by a central IT system, this ensures the best quality of products and the highest efficiency in manufacturing and storage,” states Mai Kieu Lien, the company chairwoman of Vinamilk. The award for design, planning and implementation of this finished goods storage and distribution center was given to SSI Schaefer, Giebelstadt/Germany, after an international tender. As general contractor, the intra-logistics specialists created a turn-key facility with a high-bay warehouse, front-zone, picking and shipping area – including floor slab, roof, wall, HVACR and sprinkler system in a timely manner. “SSI Schaefer provided a comprehensive solution tailored to the local requirements, offered all services from one source starting with the construction of the building to the equipment and finally to the warehouse management system and gave us the confidence to finish such a challenging project on time“, justifies Trinh Quoc Dung, factory manager at Vinamilk the award of the contract. The new distribution center is located directly next to the production buildings. The milk products filled in Tetrapaks, boxed and palletized, reach the “Smart Warehouse” via two transfer stations. The logistics software „Wamas“ of SSI Schaefer does not only carry out the warehouse management system, but also ensures efficient material flow control and picking processes. An integrated visualization furthermore offers high transparency regarding plant capacity and processing states. “The warehouse management system is one of the specialties of the plant,” comments Dung. “It directly communicates with our ERP system as well as the production management system Tetraplant-Master. Production reports are quickly accessible, offering us high transparency and flexibility in the warehouse and allowing us optimal tracking of our products.” Centerpiece of the automated material flow SSI Schaefer has installed a fully-automatic dynamic rail-guided vehicle system loop to service both transfer stations from production (Image 01). The rail-based transport system is the centerpiece of the automated material flows in the distribution center of Vinamilk. With its 15 vehicles, it provides all demand positions in the distribution center with the pallets from production. “This is the first time that we have used an electric rail-guided vehicle system for intralogistic material flows in Southeast Asia,” explains Carsten Spiegelberg, General Manager Systems and Automation, Schaefer Systems International Pte. Ltd., Singapore. “It enables efficient material flows at minimum space requirements.” Furthermore the rail route can be flexibly extended for new production lines and for additional storage aisles to cater for further expansion needs. An additional transfer station from the production and the respective extensions and connections of the vehicle system are already considered in the plant layout. With its narrow curve radius and spacesaving footprint, the nearly 370 m long railway of the rail-guided vehicle system creates a “T” form in the plant layout with the top portion of the “T” as the interface between production and the warehouse. The transfer systems from the production are lo- 32 f+h Intralogistics 4/2014

Warehousing cated at this top portion. With their double load handling devices, the vehicles accept the pallets and move them at a speed of 90 m/min counter-clockwise – along the around 130 m long lateral side of the new warehouse – to the nearly 35 m wide front side of the high-bay warehouse. On their circuit, they first serve the transfer spurs for the storage and retrieval machines of the 8 aisle high-bay warehouse. Statics calculated under seismic requirements The new finished goods product storage has a height of nearly 32 m. Special feature: SSI Schaefer calculated the statics for the entire superstructure and steel structure with consideration of seismic requirements – from the bracing towers to the beams and bracings, frames, and storage and retrieval machines. Nearly 28,000 storage positions are available in the 8 aisles of the high-bay warehouse for single-deep storage. They are designed for industry pallets mostly used in Asia (1,000 × 1,200 mm) with a weight of up to 1,100 kg. Up to 50 different items in 3 different product groups are on stock. The storage and retrieval is done by eight storage and retrieval machines, type Exyz (Image 02), a modern and effective machine generation. With its innovative design features and the compact, modular design, Exyz offers advantages in efficiency, high flexibility, and more storage capacity. Even in their standard version, the machines are equipped with efficient power recovery systems. An additional advantage is that all functional units are pre-mounted in basic modules and in a way that they can be loaded comfortably in a standard shipping container. “With this design principle it was possible to ship the storage and retrieval machines comfortably to Vietnam,” says David Goss, project manager at SSI Schaefer. “The basic modules also allowed an entirely new way of assembly on site. Because of the pre-assembled and test- 01 The rail-guided vehicle system is the centerpiece of the automated material flows and provides all demand positions in the distribution center with the pallets from production f+h Intralogistics 4/2014 33

E-PAPER KIOSK: