Area storage system for picking of door leaves

This immense daily throughput is made feasible by the fully automated SYSTRAPLAN order picking warehouse. This allocates the already packed door panels to the corresponding orders just before loading onto the trucks. "The machine has now been running here in 3-shift operation since 2016, and downtimes must be avoided at this point at all costs, since almost every door that leaves our plant passes through the SYSTRAPLAN-area storage system," reports the technical manager of the door manufacturer, Alexander Holzer.

By means of a clamping frame adjustable to the respective length, the door leafes are clamped at the head end and thus can be separated effortlessly. Sometimes a combination of clamp and vacuum transport is also used.  The singling or resorting is necessary, because the upstream production lines produce in a cut-optimized way, and therefore the orders cannot be worked-off according to the customary picking orders. For this reason it is necessary that the doors coming from the production line are first singled again in the SYSTRAPLAN system and are then assigned to the respective customer picking order. Upon storing the system is supported by an additional scanner portal, which records all needed product information fully automatically via a barcode. Once the data has been recorded, they are made available to the higher ranking warehouse management, and storage and allocation via storage gantry (gantry 1) can begin. In the next area of the area storage, which comprises two bridge portals (portal 2.1 and portal 2.2) with single board and stack transport, priority is given to rearrangements and pre-picking.  This area also contains a section for "standard goods" for large customers with high purchase numbers. All sections are connected by various roller conveyors enabling the transfer to other sections and the discharging of completed picking orders.

In the last area, section 3, operates an individual gantry (gantry 3) that takes on the final order picking and retrieval. But these processes do not necessarily need to be performed at this spot. Some picking orders are already put down on the retrieval roller conveyors via section 2 and are accordingly moved out. With the help of industrial trucks, such as lift trucks, stackers etc., the stacks formed on a pallet are then forwarded over the roller conveyors and loaded onto the trucks accordingly.

Finally confirms Mr. Holzer, who has been in charge of the project from the beginning and from a technical point of view at DANA: "If we look at the speeds in connection with the moving masses here, we see that   the best possible result was extracted of the SYSTRAPLAN system. And without the possibility of being able also to transport entire stacks with the gantries, we would not achieve the required performance in production.”