Barely baked and already on sale

For more than 65 years, Piraquê has been delivering its products as fresh as possible to more than 60,000 points of sale in the state of Rio de Janeiro alone. This is made possible by a variety of advanced material flow technologies and information systems in the production and distribution center.

Aims of the project

Among other things, the following goals were to be realized: Firstly, a centralized palletizing system for dough and bakery products in bales and cartons. Secondly, the implementation of a robot palletizing system for pasta products in bales and cartons and thirdly, the introduction of an automated high-bay warehouse for finished goods with an integrated picking tunnel and dispatch conveyor technology.

About the customer

Indústria de Produtos Alimentícios Piraquê S.A. is a traditional manufacturer of food products such as cookies, cookies, waffles and potato chips, as well as dry goods such as macaroni, spaghetti and other pasta. The company markets its products through sales outlets in the state of Rio de Janeiro. Piraquê was founded in 1950 and is based in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The company employs over 3,500 people and exports to Japan and the USA.

Task definition

Piraquê employs over 3,500 people who check the quality of dough and baked goods production from the raw material to the end product. The control center is the heart of the plant. The production of pasta and cookies is automated and monitored by computers - from the receipt of raw materials to the packaged product. This means that no manual intervention in production is required, which also ensures a high level of hygiene throughout the entire production and distribution process. Comprehensive quality control systems manage all production and supply chain processes in order to constantly optimize the quality of the finished products. Laboratory tests of the raw materials, the dosing of ingredients and even the time the products spend in the ovens are controlled.

Piraquê was driven by the need to update its automated systems - especially in the areas of pallet storage, picking, palletizing and sorting. The company was faced with the challenge of implementing a new material flow that would ensure optimal performance in the future. On the other hand, Piraquê wanted to find a partner who could both provide the right solution with the right technology and accompany the company through all process phases right up to service.

Photo: Dematic

Dematic took on the task and equipped Piraquê's production and distribution center with a range of carton and pallet conveyor systems, a robotic palletizing system, an automated high-bay warehouse, a case picking solution with pick-by-light technology and both a linear sorter and a Dematic Crossbelt Sorter.

The process

In the baked goods factory, a conveyor system connects the assembly lines across several levels with the palletizing area. Products are identified by cameras and directed to a chute for manual palletizing. The resulting pallets are then stored in the new high-bay warehouse and various technologies were used in the pasta factory to transport, store, sort and pack products in plastic bags, cartons and pallets. Products are identified by video cameras and fed to the palletizing robots via chutes.

The new, automated high-bay warehouse in the Piraquê distribution center is 150 meters long, 20 meters wide and has storage space for 15,000 pallets. Four storage and retrieval machines carry out different processes: on the one hand, the storage and retrieval of full pallets and, on the other, the supply of replenishment pallets to the pallet rack-integrated pick tunnel. This is where the containers are picked, supported by pick-by-light displays on a belt conveyor. Goods coming from the pick tunnel are fed into the automatic Dematic FlexSort SC3 crossbelt sorter, detected by camera systems and discharged again at the designated chutes, where they are prepared for dispatch.

Technical data

• High-bay warehouse, 20 m high, 150 m long with four storage and retrieval machines and 15,000 pallet spaces
• Pick-by-light picking tunnel with automatic replenishment via the stacker cranes
• MCS modular conveyor system
• Automatic robot palletizing of bales and cartons
• Rotary Dematic FlexSort SC3 crossbelt sorter, throughput over 10,000 cartons/hour, with 31 chutes for dispatch sorting
• Linear sorter in production
• Dematic iQ Warehouse Control System (WCS)

The result

The new intralogistics system from Piraquê has achieved several goals: it has replaced the manual picking processes and eliminated the time spent on locating, identifying and picking goods. The efficiency of order processing has been significantly improved - not least thanks to the simultaneous picking of several orders at the product removal points (batch picking). Automated material flow processes have also reduced potential sources of damage to products during order processing, shortened order throughput times, increased productivity and made real-time management of the integrated logistics systems possible in the first place.

Sebastian Ahl