Twin project at Adelholzener – Not afraid to tackle challenges

High-bay warehouse from System Logistics

Despite the long-standing relationship between the two companies, it was not set in stone right from the start that Krones would be awarded the order for building the high-bay warehouse as well – quite on the contrary. “We kept an entirely open mind when deciding with whom to place the order,” says Hächl. “We thought to ourselves: conveyor and warehousing technology are nowhere near as critical as filling and packaging technology, so others are good at it, too.” Therefore, System Logistics GmbH – or to be precise the Intralogistics Division of Syskron GmbH at the time the job was put out to tender – was only one vendor among many for Adelholzener. Several rounds and a number of detailed plans later, however, the Krones subsidiary prevailed over the other competitors and won the order.

Bringing all the logistic operations to a single location

Adelholzener took the decision to put its intralogistics on a new footing way back in 2015. The paramount wish was to synergise all its logistic operations, which were distributed among several external warehouses up to 25 kilometres away, at one single facility. And in view of the topographical situation at headquarters it was quite obvious that only a high-bay warehouse would be able to meet all requirements posed. During talks with an engineering consultancy office, the idea was born to build the new warehouse and relocate the associated processes without interrupting production. “For me, that was one of the most interesting jobs in my entire career,” says Erwin Hächl. “I mean what this comes down to is equivalent to open-heart surgery – over a period of twelve whole months. Such a thing will only work if you plan every single step down to the tiniest detail.” Adelholzener Alpenquellen got comprehensive support on site from Hanns-Peter Mösonef, who assisted the company’s own project managers as external coordinator, contributing his huge fund of expertise in building and commissioning large-scale logistics projects.

As the general contractor for the entire logistics package, System Logistics was responsible not only for the fixtures and furnishings of the high-bay warehouse with its approximately 23,000 pallet slots; the project also included a fully automatic system for inspecting and exchanging pallets, plus an electric overhead conveyor linked up to the production hall and the warehouse. In regard to software, it likewise comprised the implementation of a new warehouse management system and a SCADA visualisation system, which can be used to observe and control the warehousing processes from mobile terminals.

The next major step turned out to be a bit more relaxed. While the high-bay warehouse, including side and rear loading, plus the electric overhead conveyor, were being erected and installed in 2019, production kept on running without any major impairments. But this phase likewise presented some challenges, chief among them the integration of the steel construction for the body of the electric overhead conveyor: since the conveyor runs across the existing roofs of the plant, 54 steel supports, together with their foundations, had to be erected – right in the middle of the production hall. To connect the two levels with each other, a total of ten elevators were installed, distributed throughout the factory hall. In Adelholzener’s fully automatic logistics concept, the electric overhead conveyor plays a key role. “Our target was to control all of the material flows in our plant automatically. This is not all that easy with conventional pallet conveyors, because these, you see, travel only in one direction,” explains Hächl. “The electric overhead conveyor now constitutes a taxi system serving the entire plant, routing material flows to and from the production lines – that’s really quite cool.” 

Our target was to control all of the material flows in our plant automatically. Erwin HächlHead of line planning and optimisation

Getting up to speed with the new processes

New technology, new processes: the numerous changes in the logistics likewise posed a human-resources challenge for Adelholzener, as Alexander Schiroky, head of the high-bay-warehouse control centre, explains: “We were confronted with the momentous question: how can all of this possibly be organised in future?” So as to get fit for coping with the new processes, Adelholzener set up a team comprising existing and freshly hired staff and sent them to System Logistics – back then still Syskron – in Wackersdorf. An emulator was used there to train the future procedural sequences. “In the simulated Warehouse Control System, or WCS for short, all process dialogues had been imaged that had previously been defined in the specification,” says Schiroky. “This WCS test environment enabled our control-centre software staff to practice for the first time control and monitoring of the processes involved and intervention in the event of errors, and to simulate receipt and dispatch of goods.” 

And the clients staff, too – that is, the lorry drivers picking up the goods ordered – first had to get up to speed with the new processes. They are now guided through the entire loading process by means of an OAS lorry control system, using a pager. When they check in at the dispatch building, this triggers an inventory check in the Warehouse Management System. When the goods they want to pick up have been found, assigned and reserved for this client order in the WCS in the correct sequence and quantities, the lorry in question is called up for the respective loading bay, or for unloading its empties first guided to a free unloading station. The entire process is paperless. The lift-truck drivers tick off their orders in the WCS on their mobile MWA tablets (Manual Warehouse Application).

Step by step, the team was gaining more experience, and there were fewer and fewer erroneous entries and malfunctions. By Christmas, the new sequences had finally been well coordinated, so that all processes ran smoothly at the speed required. Despite all the stress and excitement inevitably entailed by this project, Erwin Hächl’s verdict is positive: “Sure, we were on a rather bumpy road, primarily in the first four weeks after going live. But in view of the project’s sheer scope, a start-up phase of four weeks is very short indeed,” he says. “No matter whether it was our own staff or the colleagues from Syskron: everyone pulled their weight. We were a smoothly functioning team, working in an invariably friendly atmosphere. The bottom line is: we can all be very proud of ourselves, of how we managed all of this successfully without any major hitches.”