Energy is saved at night and at weekends

As a manufacturer of plasma protein biotherapeutics, CSL Behring develops and produces life-sustaining and life-saving drugs from human plasma at its Marburg site. These drugs are administered in the treatment of people with rare and serious diseases and help to improve the quality of life of patients around the world. The company is a business unit of the Australian biopharmaceutical group CSL Limited (Commonwealth Serum Laboratories).

Investment for the future: new building, AKL and pallet conveyor technology

The plastic containers with a maximum load of 50 kilograms are supplied and removed via container conveyor technology. In addition, a pallet conveyor system was installed for the provision and transportation of industrial and order pallets. Photo: Stöcklin Logistik

The medicines produced are filled and packaged in the new building at the Marburg site. An automated small parts warehouse (AKL) with around 900 storage locations is attached, which is used for stocking and picking labels, package leaflets and folding cartons. The system is operated 16 hours a day, five days a week. Plastic containers with a maximum load of 50 kilograms are used as load carriers in the AKL. These are supplied and removed via container conveyor technology. In addition, a pallet conveyor system was installed for the provision and transportation of industrial and order pallets.

"For this project, we decided against a solution based on storage lifts and gave preference to two automatic BOXer SE small parts devices from Stöcklin Logistik," reports Marc Herbener, the responsible project manager at CSL Behring. The available space could of course be used very well with lift systems, but there were limits to the required picking performance. Compared to rotating racks, the use of a BOXer SE usually pays off on the fourth or fifth lift or from around 1,500 containers, says Christian Kuner, Head of Storage and Retrieval Machines at Stöcklin Logistik.

A transfer car distributes the pallets. Photo: Stöcklin Logistik

The Smart Edition of this series ensures that the "goods-to-person" principle, which is convenient for employees, is consistently guaranteed even with growing systems. Thanks to the "single point of access", the picking performance then only decreases very slightly.

Flexible material flow for pallets

The implementation of the BOXer SE-AKL at CSL Behring began in February 2016 and was successfully completed with the go-live in June. Since then, pallets supplied from the refrigerated and high-bay warehouse have been transferred to the infeed chain conveyor with forklift support. Here, a transfer car (VW) distributes the pallets to the three workstations. If all stations are occupied, the VW can temporarily store the pallets in one of the eight buffer spaces. "In this way, we have implemented an extremely flexible material flow in this area, which can adapt to changing order circumstances," says Stöcklin project manager Matthias Föhner.

Smart lightweight for container storage

Two BOXer SE small parts units (KTG) travel in two aisles over a length of 21 meters in the 900 bin storage locations. The five-metre-high KTGs are each equipped with a load handling device in the form of a combi telescope, which in the standard version can hold up to two containers weighing 50 kilograms each at the same time. "The smart version of the BOXer is an ideal solution for bin, tray or carton storage systems with 1,000 to 8,000 storage locations per aisle," says Division Manager Christian Kuner. The extremely low tare weight of the BOXer SE was achieved by installing the majority of the heavy components on the fixed side rather than moving them along with the appliance. In this way, the moving mass of the BOXer SE was reduced by around 40 percent compared to the existing BOXer.

Integrated energy management

The BOXer SE is characterized by the integrated Stöcklin energy management. The so-called "boost/eco/sleep mode functionality" is included as standard. In boost mode, the appliance runs at the nominal values and thus achieves an output of around 110 containers stored and retrieved per hour and aisle. Eco mode is used for operating conditions in which maximum system performance is not required. Here, the speeds and accelerations of the travel and lifting drives are reduced by up to 50 percent. In addition to the reduced energy requirement of the system, this also reduces wear and increases the service life of the components. Reducing the dynamic values to 50 percent, for example, reduces the energy requirement by around 20 percent. In such a case, however, the system output or container throughput would still be around 75 percent of the nominal output. The appliance can be set to sleep mode for longer downtimes due to operational reasons. In "sleep" mode, the control unit remains switched on. However, all other electronic components that draw energy even in standby mode without movement are switched off. A restart to the active operating state takes a maximum of 30 seconds.

"Sleep mode can save up to 1,600 kWh of electricity per year and reduce harmful CO2 emissions by around 1,000 kilograms. This makes the BOXer SE not only the lightest, but also the most energy-efficient small parts appliance on the market." Christian Kuner, Head of Storage and Retrieval Machines, Stöcklin Logistik

The BOXer SE sleeps at night

"An appliance in sleep mode requires a basic power of around 400 W. In sleep mode, however, the basic requirement is only around 100 W. Thanks to this functionality, we save a large amount of energy during downtimes - for example overnight or at weekends," emphasizes CSL-Behring project manager Marc Herbener. This has a positive effect on the overall operating costs and the individual components are also subject to significantly less stress.

"The system has been running stably since commissioning and we are very satisfied with the chosen solution, which can be flexibly adapted to new requirements and tasks at any time and expanded if necessary," summarizes Marc Herbener.

Urs Grütter