of pallets and boxes

A Hastinik UK C.qxd
6/11/06
15:44
Página 100
MIXED
AUTOMATION
of pallets and boxes
Two automated warehouses, one based on pallets and the
other on boxes, are the new highlights of the central facilities
of the Hastinik Group in Santa Perpètua de la Mogoda
(Barcelona). This different form of management is optimising the
handling of 18,000 article types of the 30,000 sold by the four
companies which make up the Group.
T
he Hastinik Group is made up of four companies:
Inox Ibérica, SA (specialised in stainless steel nuts
and bolts), Tubasol, SA (piping and carbon steel accessories), Aerotécnica, SA (nuts and bolts), and Hastinik,
SA (tubes, stainless steel accessories, and nickel and titanium alloys).
100 BestPractices
In the mid-1980s, the Group decided to centralise its offices and warehouses in Santa Perpètua de la Mogoda
(Barcelona), in a surface area of around 40,000 m2 divided into nine warehouses. These facilities bring together different types of piping (square, rectangular and
special) and accessories made by Hastinik and Tubasol,
A Hastinik UK C.qxd
6/11/06
15:44
Página 102
AUTOMATED WAREHOUSE OF PALLETS AND BOXES
along with nuts and bolts made by Inox Ibérica. Since
then, a number of branch offices have been opened
throughout Spain. In addition to the nine offices –in
Madrid, Murga (Álava), Chiva (Valencia), Seville, Vigo,
Girona, Tarragona, Culleredo (A Coruña) and Zaragoza,
with their own warehouses and a computer management system connected to the mother company in
real time– another three branch offices are soon to be
added. The central warehouse in Santa Perpètua supplies both the above warehouses and clients directly.
The business has continued to grow and this has led to a
reorganization of the warehouse in order to optimise
resources and processes. The Hastinik Group sells some
30,000 article types between the four companies.
"Added to this is the need for space to store a large
number of goods received in single batches as a result of the current trend for buying abroad –from
Asia, for example", says Jaume Guardiola, IT director
of the Hastinik Group. Logically, these areas work with
longer delivery times due to the large distances and the
need to make transport cost effective.
After studying all the options, the decision was taken
to install two automated warehouses, one for boxes
(Miniload) and another for pallets. This is in addition to
the pallet racking for the picking of units with a high
turnover, in one of the warehouses which form part of
the 40,000 m2 of the Santa Perpètua de la Mogoda facilities. At the start of 2005 they took on a new objective:
to store and manage all the article types of Inox Ibérica
and the accessories of Hastinik in these new systems,
that is, a total of 18,000 of the 30,000 articles sold by
the Group.
The most efficient system for the Miniload is
for the same product to occupy a maximum of six
or seven boxes or containers
102 BestPractices
A Hastinik UK C.qxd
6/11/06
15:44
Página 104
AUTOMATED WAREHOUSE OF PALLETS AND BOXES
In the past, the company had used conventional racking
for manually storing stock and doing the picking. Jaume
Guardiola says that the two reasons which led to the installation of the automated warehouses were to maximise the use of space and to speed up the service. "We
wanted to save time in the preparation of the orders",
notes Guardiola. Moreover, thanks to the new systems,
errors in picking have been minimised because it is the
software (SIMEGA), rather than a human being, which
manages them and which selects the units to be extracted. However, he adds, "we decided to keep one rack to
do the manual picking of those article types with the
highest turnover due to the speed it offers".
The installation in detail
The Miniload is made up of two racks of more than nine
metres in height and almost 56 m in length with 31 load
levels for plastic boxes (containers) of different sizes,
totalling 6,944 boxes. At the same time, these boxes
can be subdivided in order to house several different article types in each one. The only aisle in the structure is
served by a stacker crane which is in charge of putting
the boxes in free storage spaces, as well as extracting
and taking them to the work station where the picking is
carried out.
The automated warehouse for pallets, which also has a
stacker crane operating along the only aisle, has two
racks of 15,180 mm in height and 56,015 mm in length.
Both have 26 bays (two pallets per space) and 12 load
levels of different sizes. Level one is 1,150 mm high, as
are the next five levels. Levels seven to ten are 1,400 mm
high, while level eleven is 1,800 mm high. There is total
capacity for 1,144 pallets. These pallets are often made
up of small-to-medium-sized cardboard boxes which
could fall with the movements of the stacker crane, so it
was decided to use some form of container. At first
metal cages were proposed, but, when the pallet is half
empty it is not easy for the operator to take out the
goods. In the end, the solution hit upon was to use
wooden rings (one on top of another) which are removed as the layers of the pallet are reduced.
As has already been briefly explained, a conventional
pallet rack has been built next to the automated pallet
system with seven load levels, which holds the 50 article
types with the highest turnover of Inox Ibérica, along
104 BestPractices
READY FOR PICKING
The orders centralised from all the branch offices arrive at the Catalan facilities of the
Hastinik Group. From here the goods are sent out to each office or, directly, to the end
clients. The client portfolio is made up of companies in the building, chemical, petrochemical, food, aeronautical, transformation, boiler making, decoration sectors,
etc., basically from the domestic market.
Each company of the Group has its own personnel in the nine warehouses of the facilities, except for the new automated systems in which Hastinik and Inox Ibérica
share staff. The orders are entered into the company's management software (SAP)
which prints out the material preparation documents, independently of the company which has issued them.
with the 50 highest-turnover articles of Hastinik. The
first three load levels are used to do the manual picking
(from the hundred fixed positions), while the next ones
are used to stock these article types and to supply the
storage spaces as soon as they become empty. In addition, this rack houses large-volume accessories as
they do not fit in the automated pallet system.
The new automated warehouses and the manual picking
rack are next to the warehouse's unloading bay, which has
a dock for the incoming goods, so transport is minimal.
"Basically, the assignment of an article type to a
warehouse depends on its size and on the quantity in
stock. A thousand bolts can represent a lot of space
or very little depending on their volume", notes the IT
director of the Hastinik Group. The most efficient
system for the Miniload is for the same article to occupy
a maximum of six or seven boxes. If ten is exceeded, it is
sent to the automated pallet system
The rest of the goods which are not managed from these
new storage systems are, for the most part, pipes and
tubes of different dimensions and thicknesses, although
the standard length is 6 m. These units are distributed
among the seven remaining warehouses and are stored
in conventional pallet racking, above all, in vertical racking, which consists of vertical bars anchored to the warehouse floor forming storage locations. In this case, the
material handling is done using crane bridges which
The sales representative who enters the order in the system does not worry where the
units requested are physically placed: this is checked by the SAP. If the extraction or
part of it must be done from one of the two automated warehouses or from the racking
for manual picking, this software system generates a series of files which are sent to
SIMEGA (the software which manages the automated warehouses) telling it to execute corresponding dispatches. Very briefly, all the orders are grouped together, each
warehouse deals with those corresponding to it, and the orders are then consolidated
in a dock for this purpose. It is the operator who finishes them that "closes" the dispatch, packing up the packages and identifying them with a dispatch label.
On another point, Hastinik sends a quality control certificate of each product to the
client. In order to do this, SIMEGA reports the cast number (the number which appears stamped or printed on all the materials) to the SAP so that this certificate can
be located and printed with the delivery note or sent later with the invoice.
When the order includes tubes or accessories from other warehouses or buildings in
Santa Perpètua, a preparation sheet is prepared for each area where the picking is to
be done. Then, when organising the transport, the delivery notes are issued, which
also tell the driver how many warehouses he should visit in order to collect the goods
of each client and how many packages they are made up of.
The Group has its own transport for Barcelona and the surrounding area. The rest of
deliveries have been outsourced and are dealt with by express transport companies, in
the case of orders from Inox Ibérica, or complete lorries for the dispatch of piping. Specifically, a total of two hundred orders are prepared in the central facilities every day.
drive along the aisles of "under the roof" warehouse area
in order to access the storage spaces. The unloading of
the material, which arrives by lorry from the suppliers to
be stored, and the loading for finishing the dispatches, is
done directly with the crane bridge. In contrast, the
handling of the rest of materials is dealt with by conventional material handling machinery.
BestPractices 105
A Hastinik UK C.qxd
6/11/06
15:44
Página 106
AUTOMATED WAREHOUSE OF PALLETS AND BOXES
The new automated warehouses and the racking for manual picking
are next to the unloading bay of the warehouse
106 BestPractices
The process
Among all the companies in the group, there are some
800 suppliers who deliver to these installations from
very wide-ranging origins (domestic, European and
non-EU countries), and thus the goods are received in
function of purchasing needs. Each company acts independently with regards to its suppliers and there may be
weeks during which several very bulky deliveries coincide. Pipes and tubes, for example, are always delivered
by lorry and accessories always come on pallets. This
said, if the load comes from a non-EU country, it arrives
by container. These deliveries are reported beforehand
so that it is possible to compare on reception the predelivery documents with the actual goods received.
They are then stored.
mixed on a single pallet: the pallet has to be totally dismantled in order to store each unit in its corresponding
location. In contrast, single-reference pallets can be
placed directly in the automated pallet warehouse.
Those units which must be entered in either of the two
automated warehouses require handling after their reception. These are often article types which arrive
On occasions, a load is received which needs to be distributed between the automated pallet warehouse, the Miniload or the racking for manual picking. The load is
In function of the supplier, the goods are sometimes
entered without a barcode. "There is no standard within
the sector. Concepts have not been unified, so each
company works with its own article types in order to
manage its logistics", notes Jaume Guardiola. In the case
that they are to be located in one of the two automated
warehouses it is necessary to encode them. These units
are placed in a free storage space, unlike the piping, for
example, which have specific locations assigned to them
according to their measurements and sizes.
A Hastinik UK C.qxd
6/11/06
15:44
Página 108
AUTOMATED WAREHOUSE OF PALLETS AND BOXES
stopped in the reception dock, which is also equipped
with pallet racks. Then, the load is physically checked by
comparing it to the pre-entrance documents and the final entry operation in the management software (SAP)
of the Hastinik Group is carried out. Finally, the file with
these receptions is sent to SIMEGA (the software which
manages these new storage systems), which has enough
information to determine where to locate each unit.
In function of the storage destination of the goods, the
operator prepares the units in one way or another.
He/she puts them into boxes for the Miniload or leaves
them on pallets for the racking for manual picking or for
the automated box system.
In the near future, the aim is for the stock to be distributed among any of the three options, based on the premise that the Miniload is the quickest system when preparing orders. In order to save time, for example, if 50
boxes of an article type arrive, an option would be to
save ten of them in the Miniload and the rest in the automated pallet system. Later, transfers would be carried
out every day from one system to another so that the
picking is always supplied by the automated box system.
Likewise, each product received, although it already
exists in either of the two automated systems, occupies
a new location. "There is no problem at the moment",
stresses Jaume Guardiola, "as we always work using
the FIFO method (first in, first out) and until a box or
a pallet is emptied, the system does not extract the
following unit with the same article type to do the
Wooden rings are used instead of metal
cages in the automated pallet warehouse to prevent
the goods from falling off
108 BestPractices
picking". Similarly, as the automated systems were
brought into operation at the beginning of 2005, the article types have not yet been segregated as articles A, B
or C in function of their turnover. In addition, when an
installation of these characteristics is used for the first
time, the manufacturer recommends that the weight be
distributed homogeneously, and so therefore, should
the goods. "Nevertheless, in 2006, once the automated systems are full and the structures are in
place, the article types of higher turnover will be
placed in the area with easiest access for the stacker
cranes in function of the historical data of the movements which SIMEGA has registered", says the IT
director of the Hastinik Group. That is, the ABC of the articles will be taken into account.
Review
After a year working, in the words of Guardiola, "with
these new automated storage systems we have gained
in the preparation of orders, and the humans errors
when doing the picking have been minimised ". And
he adds: "The greater speed, the efficient management of the warehouse and the use of a 24-hour
transport service are all allowing us to eliminate duplicated stock and to centralise Inox Ibérica's stock,
although we have had to extend work shifts".
On another point, a new automated pallet warehouse is
currently being built which is to be located next to the
existing one, and with the same sizes and characteristics. The only difference will be in its capacity, as it will
be designed to house 2,500 pallets instead of the 1,144
at present because the racking will have a greater number of load levels as each level will be lower in height.
It has not been possible to centralise Hastinik's stock.
However, the accessories and the tubes have to be delivered at the same time because one cannot be used without the other. Each branch office has the material
which it sells in their area.
I
BestPractices 109
A Hastinik UK C.qxd
6/11/06
15:45
Página 110
AUTOMATED WAREHOUSE OF PALLETS AND BOXES
TECHNICAL DETAILS
OF THE MINILOAD
A
Length: 55,937 mm
Height: 9,215.5 mm
MINILOAD AREA
Number of racks: 2
(FUTURE EXTENSION OF MINILOAD)
Number of aisles: 1
(MAINTENANCE AREA)
Aisle width: 850 mm
26
CONVENTIONAL AREA
Number of stacker cranes: 1
Number of load levels: 31
FUTURE EXTENSION OF PALLET RACKING
Capacity per space: 1 box
Load unit: boxes of
360/400 x 560/600 x 137/337 mm
A
Total capacity: 6,944 boxes
TECHNICAL DETAILS
OF THE AUTOMATED
PALLET WAREHOUSE
Length: 56,015 mm
Height: 15,180 mm
Number of racks: 2
Number of bays: 26
Number of aisles: 1
FUTURE EXTENSION OF PALLET RACKING
FUTURE EXTENSION OF MINILOAD
Bay width: 2,150.5 mm
Aisle width: 1,600 mm
Number of stacker cranes: 1
Number of load levels: 12
Capacity per space: 2 pallets
Load unit: pallets of 800/900 x
1,200/1,250 x 950/1,200/1,300 mm
Total capacity: 1,144 pallets
FREE MINIMUM DISTANCE
TO ANY ELEMENT
SECTION A-A'
SCALE 1:100
110 BestPractices
111 BestPractices