Innovative conveyor technology in the expanded logistics center

Near the Pol­ish city of Poz­nan, Demat­ic is expand­ing the logis­tics cen­ter of Julius Blum GmbH. On the premis­es of the Aus­tri­an man­u­fac­tur­er and dis­trib­u­tor of fur­ni­ture fit­tings, the automa­tion tech­nol­o­gy provider is build­ing a new, ful­ly auto­mat­ed high-bay ware­house. As part of this expan­sion, the Heusen­stamm-based com­pa­ny is also installing eight stor­age and retrieval machines that ensure the auto­mat­ic stor­age and retrieval of pal­lets. Fur­ther com­po­nents of the cus­tomized automa­tion solu­tion are heavy unit load con­vey­ors of type BK25 as well as sus­pen­sion chain and tier con­vey­ors that con­nect exist­ing stor­age areas with the high-bay ware­house. With the sys­tem, Blum is increas­ing stor­age capac­i­ties and rais­ing the lev­el of automa­tion at the site. Com­ple­tion and com­mis­sion­ing of the sys­tem are sched­uled for the fourth quar­ter of 2023. 

“Demat­ic con­vinced us with an over­all pack­age of intral­o­gis­tics know-how, tech­ni­cal qual­i­ty and per­son­al sup­port. The solu­tion con­sists of proven stan­dard com­po­nents that have already proven high­ly reli­able and durable in many oth­er Blum plants worldwide.”

- Markus Schnei­der, Group Man­ag­er Intralogistics

In addi­tion to intral­o­gis­tics automa­tion, includ­ing a soft­ware solu­tion for the new high-bay ware­house, the order also includes con­nec­tion to the inven­to­ry con­vey­or sys­tem and link­ing the indi­vid­ual logis­tics areas.

Demat­ic built the world’s first high-bay ware­house more than 40 years ago, mak­ing it a pio­neer in the indus­try. For the Blum plant in Poz­nan, the Heusen­stamm-based com­pa­ny devel­oped a cus­tomized automa­tion solu­tion con­sist­ing of a new pal­let high-bay ware­house served by eight SR-U1200/1 stack­er cranes with tele­scop­ic forks. In the new stor­age area, the com­pa­ny stocks com­po­nents as well as fin­ished fur­ni­ture fit­ting sys­tems. The stack­er cranes have sin­gle-wheel dri­ves and are par­tic­u­lar­ly durable. “Thanks to the mod­u­lar design, the stack­er cranes can be pre­cise­ly aligned with our require­ments,” describes the group manager. 

The scope of sup­ply also includes heavy unit load con­vey­ors of type BK25, which are used to store and retrieve entire pal­lets and are capa­ble of trans­port­ing five dif­fer­ent types of load­ing aids. The con­vey­or pack­age is sup­ple­ment­ed by type T5 sus­pen­sion chain con­vey­ors, which ensure hor­i­zon­tal con­vey­ing and right-angled infeed and out­feed of pal­lets or skele­ton con­tain­ers. Six tier con­vey­ors act as a con­nect­ing ele­ment between the con­vey­or lev­els, lift­ing or low­er­ing the unit loads as required. “The solu­tion guar­an­tees us opti­mal­ly coor­di­nat­ed process­es and a ful­ly auto­mat­ed mate­r­i­al flow between the indi­vid­ual stor­age areas,” adds Schnei­der. Demat­ic is also expand­ing the mate­r­i­al flow com­put­er sys­tem and a ware­house man­age­ment com­put­er to auto­mat­i­cal­ly merge all rel­e­vant data into one system. 

The two com­pa­nies have a long and suc­cess­ful part­ner­ship. For the first time, Demat­ic’s pre­de­ces­sor com­pa­ny Man­nes­mann Demag sup­plied the man­u­fac­tur­er and dis­trib­u­tor of fur­ni­ture hard­ware sys­tems with cus­tomized ware­house tech­nol­o­gy in 1986. “Both Demat­ic’s solu­tions and the coop­er­a­tion have proven their worth,” says Schnei­der. Demat­ic is also in use for Blum at oth­er loca­tions — for exam­ple, at sev­er­al plants in Aus­tria, the cen­tral ware­house in Cana­da and the pro­duc­tion ware­house in the USA. Automa­tion is pri­mar­i­ly car­ried out with stor­age and retrieval machines, con­vey­or tech­nol­o­gy and pick­ing sta­tions, as well as the asso­ci­at­ed soft­ware. “The many years of coop­er­a­tion, direct con­tact with key peo­ple, and stan­dards help to imple­ment the joint projects quick­ly, reli­ably, and effi­cient­ly,” Schnei­der sums up.