Ten percent more efficiency

The Etanorm series is one of the most important products of the KSB Group, a leading international manufacturer of pumps and valves. KSB has manufactured more than 1.5 million of these single-stage volute casing pumps to date - including at its headquarters in Frankenthal near Ludwigshafen. Up to 300 units are produced here every day. At the heart of production is the parts supply warehouse (TVS): the main components of the pumps, including casings, pressure covers and impellers, are stored in the tray warehouse with around 5,000 storage locations. Only when a customer places an order is an individually tailored pump picked from these components, assembled and dispatched. If the warehouse fails, this results in considerable additional work for the employees in providing the components, which can cause a delay in delivery. After 14 years of operation, the TVS had reached the end of its service life. "The problems with the system were increasing," says Stefan Breivogel, Head of Logistics at KSB's Frankenthal plant, describing the situation in mid-2016. "Our employees were increasingly tied to the system's shortcomings. They had to straighten crates, acknowledge errors and rectify faults."

viastore

viastore is a leading international provider of intralogistics systems and intralogistics software. The company viastore Systems focuses on the planning, implementation and continuous improvement of system installations. The viastore software bundles all activities related to the standard WMS viadat and the viastore SAP logistics solutions (EWM and WM). viastore employs 500 people worldwide and generates a turnover of 130 million euros.

Original bearing manufacturer no longer available

Components for up to 300 pumps are retrieved from the TVS every day, and 1,800 parts are picked in three shifts.

Numerous components of the storage and retrieval machines (SRMs) in the two-aisle warehouse had now been discontinued - there were no longer any spare parts for the PLCs, drives, frequency converters, distance measurement and data light barriers. A similar situation prevailed in the upstream conveyor technology: the transfer carriage was getting on in years, the control systems had been discontinued and the contour control system was causing further malfunctions. "Due to the bankruptcy of the original manufacturer, we no longer had a contact person for the system and for special tasks such as programming the PLC," says Stefan Bott, IT Coordinator at the plant, describing an additional challenge. Andreas Diebe, Head of Maintenance, summarizes the state of the system: "We had too many error messages every day. We were able to acknowledge most of them by pressing a button. But there were also errors that were not so easy to rectify. As we offer delivery within 24 hours for some products, the situation was no longer acceptable. So the decision was made to modernize the system.

"With the modernization, we also wanted to increase transparency in the plant and have just one contact person for all issues."

Stefan Bott IT Coordination at the KSB plant in Frankenthal

Higher performance an important goal

The aim was not only to improve the availability of the storage system, but also to increase its performance. KSB commissioned its partner viastore with the modernization. The intralogistics expert replaced all drives with modern frequency-controlled motors and the PLC with the latest Siemens S7 controllers. For the stacker cranes, the experts installed state-of-the-art data light barriers and distance measuring systems, fitted new traveling control cabinets and installed the powerful Profinet bus system. To further increase the efficiency of the system, the viastore specialists also replaced the traversing carriage. The new one is up to 15 percent more powerful. Another important milestone for smooth operation was the retrofit of the contour control system. viastore has also optimized the system on the software side. The parts supply warehouse was equipped with a new material flow control system. In addition, a soft PLC was installed that maps the current S7 program on an industrial PC. This allows the hotline to access the connected system components via a single IP address with far more options for detecting and rectifying faults.

KSB

KSB is a leading international manufacturer of pumps and valves. Headquartered in Frankenthal, Germany, the Group is represented on five continents with its own sales companies, production facilities and service operations. Around 15,500 employees generate sales revenue of more than 2.1 billion euros.

More efficiency across the board

The new traversing carriage is up to 15 percent more efficient.

The modernization was completed after seven working days. And it was worth it - Stefan Breivogel did the math: "We were able to significantly reduce the number of faults." The noise level in the system has also been reduced by the retrofit. Working at the picking stations is therefore less stressful, more pleasant and more ergonomic. At the same time, the efficiency of the employees has increased - they now have time to help their colleagues in the other warehouse areas, despite the growing number of retrievals in the TVS warehouse. "Overall, the performance of the system has increased by around ten percent," explains Breivogel. As a result, TVS now has the capacity to supply customers reliably and punctually, even as sales of Eta pumps continue to grow.

http://www.viastore-systems.de