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
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