Success Story: Retrofit of a Honeycomb storage system

The company in Bielefeld was planning a retrofit in order to continue to guarantee spare parts availability and ensure high process reliability. ”The most important factor when awarding a project like this is to have confidence in the company which is carrying out the upgrade,“ said Werner Schäper, authorised representative of Dreckshage. ”After all, you are shutting down a system on which you have to depend. In our case, Remmert was even able to offer a better system than the original system manufacturer. The reasons for this were convincing – Remmert presented us with an equally good solution and offered an important additional advantage with their sophisticated pulling mechanism for the storage and retrieval machine.“

To reduce the risk of technical problems during assembly later on, Remmert assembled all the relevant new storage elements for Dreckshage in advance in their own production facility for testing purposes. The upgrade also proceeded according to plan – Remmert experts not only renewed the drive and control system for the honeycomb storage system but also replaced the pulling mechanism of SRM and installed the PRO WMS Professional warehouse management system. They installed a new laser measurement system for the distance measurement and replaced many wearing parts. In the end, the experts only needed four of the five days budgeted for the project. The main component of the overhauled honeycomb storage system is the new electro-mechanical pulling mechanism for the SRM, offering very high availability and ease of maintenance in comparison to the usual hydraulic pulling mechanism. The system also operates extremely fast – the grippers which pull the cassette out of the bays are already positioned correctly as the SRM is moving in order to save time while the cassette is retrieved. The usual waiting time is reduced to zero.

The honeycomb storage system also has the Remmert PRO WMS Professional warehouse management software. This solution links the host ERP system to the SRM controls and transfers all the orders stored in the ERP system to the new touch screen of the SRM, reporting them back later as processed. At the same time, the coordinates of the bin locations are also transmitted so that the SRM now moves precisely to the extraction position of the corresponding bin location for storage or retrieval. “With the continuous data stream and the new drive and pulling mechanism, we have now reduced the times for each load cycle by 40%. We are therefore already operating at the upper speed limit for manually operated SRMs,“ said authorised representative Schäper, commenting on the performance of the new system. The Remmert machines are designed for even higher speeds and will eventually be used mostly in unmanned systems. Remmert has also been carrying out the maintenance and service work for the new honeycomb storage system.