The most important requirement for the new warehouse was to centralise the company’s logistics and material management system. “We therefore planned to integrate an efficient stock picking and assembly warehouse in order to respond to breakdown contracts fast and flexibly,” explained Volker Krüger, logistics manager. An additional requirement was to be able to store the heavy and large spare parts at one location so as to save space and therefore increase transparency.

The Remmers bridge warehouse was the perfect answer to these requirements. The system, with its 183 divisible cassettes, can accommodate up to 915 t of material on no more than 250 m². “The bridge” achieves this large storage capacity because of its very compact design and its height which is just under 17 m. “To store the different goods in the best way Uncompromisingly fast and compact possible, we specially adapted the cassettes to SZST’s needs,” said Frank Baudet, Sales Manager of Remmert. With the 6 m long cassettes, the full service provider can now store up to 700 kg material per 1 m storage length. The storage system is also equipped with a high-performance storage and retrieval machine which is even able to handle 5 t load carriers at a speed of 60 m/min. With a maximum of 2.5 min. for each complete storage and retrieval cycle, the system is able to achieve 24 double cycles per hour. The warehouse management is handled by the Remmert PRO WMS Enterprise warehouse management system. This system is connected to SZST’s SAP system via a standard interface. It not only ensures that processes are maintained and transparency is maximised but also that stocks are constantly kept up to date, product delivery is extremely fast and lead times are shorter.

The material flow in the SZST warehouse is now very efficient – once the stored goods are delivered to goods receipt, the waiting cassettes are loaded using a crane or a forklift. After the cassette has moved into the storage system, the storage and retrieval machine takes over and transports the load carriers to the bin location. To optimise the routes for the storage and retrieval machine and thus ensure a quick entry and exit, SZST decided on chaotic storage both in the entire warehouse as a whole and in individual cassettes. When an order is generated, the storage and retrieval machine removes the corresponding cassette with the desired items and transports them to the goods issue station. “By integrating the bridge warehouse, we have centralised all the logistics and materials management at one location and therefore now have the necessary transparency for existing stocks,” said Volker Krüger, summarising the main benefit of installing the new storage system. It has also been possible to considerably improve safety.