Over 100 years ago, entrepreneur Paul Vahle invented the first copper conductor rail, revolutionizing the power supply for mobile industrial applications. After his untimely death, the company moved its production and administration from Dortmund to neighboring Kamen at the end of the 1950s. "The location has grown historically. If we want to keep the material flow up to date, modernization is essential from time to time," says Henning Stelte, Head of Operations at Paul Vahle. Another such time came in spring 2019. The company was planning to fundamentally restructure its internal material flow by installing an automated long goods honeycomb warehouse. "The aim was to streamline intralogistics and production in order to use the existing space more efficiently," says Stelte, explaining the decision to make a brownfield investment, i.e. the digital transformation of an existing production facility. The globally active system provider wanted to position itself in a more customer-oriented way and create the opportunity to implement additional production lines at the Kamen site. The Swiss manufacturer fehr was chosen as the service provider.

New wine in new bottles

The particular challenge was to integrate the standardized honeycomb system into the existing production site. "We wanted to change the fabric of the building as little as possible," reports Stelte. As a result, only a 100 square meter extension was built for the project, which houses the material delivery. "We are thus concentrating all of the long goods handling in just one area and are spreading out the activity on the company premises," says Stelte.

Inside the main hall, however, which measures around 2,500 square meters, almost everything is new: "We have poured foundations, laid hall floors with color-coded production, traffic and escape routes and installed the entire technical infrastructure for electrics, heating and lighting," says the operations manager, describing the work. Innovative operating equipment, including robot support, will also be used on the production lines in future.

Lots of capacity in a small space

After completion of the refurbishment in April 2020, fehr installed the 5.5-metre-high racking block over 70 meters. This provides 330 honeycombs for the storage of 6.4-meter-long goods. "Aluminum, copper and plastic provide the basis for Vahle conductor rails. Around 70 percent of our production portfolio has a long-cable character," says Stelte, outlining the necessity. The heart of the system is the automatic storage and retrieval machine (SRM), which transports up to three tons of weight at around 120 meters per minute.

The honeycomb system is based on the interchangeable cassette principle, i.e. it transports the entire storage unit out of the rack for production supply and brings it to the assembly stations. This eliminates the need for many forklift and crane trips, and the material flow, which is now laid out lengthwise, makes the cumbersome turning of bulky goods unnecessary, as Holger von der Heyde, the project manager responsible for Kaizen and process optimization at Vahle, explains: "We are taking a completely new approach with the material-to-person principle. We expect a significant increase in productivity from the optimized production and logistics processes." In addition, occupational safety in the factory halls will also improve.

DIY: energy, data transmission and positioning

All components for energy and data transmission as well as positioning were supplied by the system provider itself. Achim Dries, Managing Director at Vahle, explains the benefits: "Our VKS10 compact conductor rail has been specially developed for use in the tightest of spaces." Together with the APOS Magnetic sliding positioning system, which aligns the RGB with millimetre precision, and the SMGM vCOM data transmission system, which ensures interference-free communication with a transmission rate of up to 100 megabits per second, the conductor rail is installed in the HRL profile to save space. The control data is transmitted to the control station together with the recordings from four cameras. "This product combination is unique in the honeycomb warehouse application area and enables the connection of camera technology or the smart networking of various system parts and logistics processes," says Dries. For the most sustainable operation possible, the system uses the fehr Greenline system to feed the braking energy of the stacker crane back into the power circuit. Vahle has also invested in LED lighting and a lighting control system.

The honeycomb warehouse was handed over in August 2020 and is currently being equipped. Thanks to their joint expertise in the areas of energy and data transmission as well as material flow, the two industry experts have created a holistic system to optimize intelligent processes and goods flows for the logistics centers of the future. Interested parties will soon be able to see this for themselves: "The honeycomb warehouse will serve as an operational showroom to convince customers of the efficiency of our smart systems," reports Dries. To this end, the system transmits live images to a screen in the showroom.

The article appeared in materialfluss 11-12/20.