Supplies for Foodies

Partner Logistics Europe (PLE) owns and operates several automated warehouses in the Netherlands, Belgium, Great Britain, France and Russia as logistics service provider.

Since February 2011, the new chilled high bay warehouse in Argentan in Normandy (France) provides French discounters with ice cream.

Intralogistics specialist Klug GmbH integrierte Systeme from Teunz (Germany) delivered a system solution for the material flow of the chilled store. Automatic cranes, conveyor system and controls are optimally tuned. This leads to higher speeds of the automatic cranes and in total to an increase in mechanics performance of 16 % above normal. Furthermore, Klug interconnected the customer's material flow computer (MFC).

The warehouse with space for about 40,000 pallets – Euro, industrial and CHEP pallets – is 35 metres high, offers a storage area of 6,000 m² and is characterized by other special technical features with reference to controls and material flow:

• Each of the three automatic cranes is equipped with a double load-handling device of the "Muli" type. These devices transport two pallets simultaneously and supply and discharge the channels. These channels are multiple deep with up to 10 storage locations, depending on the pallet type.

• The concept for "flexible storage" which has been inspected and approved by the TÜV enables, that if an automatic crane fails, the Muli of the crane in the adjacent aisle has access to the storage locations in the channel of the faulty crane. This grants continuous availability of the storage locations.

• The production site of the current client is only one kilometre away from the new high bay warehouse. On delivery, their pallets are automatically unloaded from the lorry, checked and stored.

• Two transfer cars on one rail place the pallets at disposal for dispatch on 27 retrieval lanes.

• A reduction of the oxygen content in the high bay warehouse to 17 % and integrated lock gates make further fire protection in the warehouse unnecessary.

Moreover, Klug adapted the telegram transmissions between subordinate control and the customer's MFC to the customer-specific interface. At 750 reporting points, the MFC can entirely take over a control function on the controls.

In addition to its current client, PLE is looking for other customers for the warehouse which also offers value-added services, in order to exploit it optimally and in order to continue to increase the efficiency of the supply chain for the customer.

Photo: © Partner Logistics Europe

7 November 2011