"Logistics is a competitive factor for us"

Bürkert Fluid Control Systems opened its new plant on the Criesbach campus not far from the company headquarters in Ingelfingen at the end of 2016. The manufacturer of measurement, control and regulation systems for liquids and gases invested a total of 30 million euros. "Our primary goal was to shorten throughput times in assembly," says Plant Manager Marc Steffen Dahlheimer. "For this reason, we decided to significantly increase the level of automation in the area logistics processes for supplying the assembly department, while at the same time maintaining flexibility in production." One of the biggest challenges in day-to-day operations is mastering the diversity of variants. This is because Bürkert primarily supplies complete solutions for customers, some of which have highly individualized configurations. This requires a large number of different parts to be kept in stock and brought to the assembly line. Automated logistics is a great advantage for this order-related production. The intralogistics general contractor SITLog took over the control technology and visualization of the system itself. "We purchased the steel construction for the automated small parts warehouse (AKL), the mechanics of the storage and retrieval machines and the conveyor technology, the fire protection doors, the platform for the AKL pre-zone, the manual pallet warehouse and the delivery of the work tables to the individual work stations," explains Christian Hausner, Project Manager at SITLog. The major challenge here was managing the different types of storage and conveyor containers that Bürkert already had in use. "In this project, we are concentrating on our core competencies of control and IT - we are getting all the other components from our partners," says Hausner.

Automated small parts warehouse is the heart of the system

The assembly processes at Bürkert are supplied with parts fully automatically from the area logistics. Photo: Leuze electronic

This holistic approach also convinced Bürkert. "We opted for SITLog because we believe it fulfills the technical requirements in the best possible way," says Dahlheimer. This is because no Bürkert customer is prepared to pay for logistics services, but for the quality of the products and services. Fast, error-free delivery is a prerequisite today - with a guaranteed standard delivery time of five days worldwide for products from the main range. "Without functional, efficient divisional logistics, we wouldn't be able to achieve this and the products would also be unaffordable for our customers," says Dahlheimer. "For this reason, we see logistics as a real competitive advantage."

The capacity of Bürkert's new fully automated container warehouse is around 27,000 storage locations in currently three aisles with double-deep storage. Two different container sizes with dimensions of 600 x 400 millimetres and 465 x 315 mm and a payload of up to 20 kg are used. Multi-order picks can be carried out at the four picking workstations, i.e. picking the same components for several parallel orders. In addition, there are two conveyor lines for the production connection, twelve initial packaging workstations and three outgoing goods lanes. The conveying capacity is 285 double cycles per hour in the miniload, 400 containers per hour in order picking and production, and 600 containers per hour in primary packaging and empty container return.

"Here you can see that warehouse automation also makes sense for medium-sized companies. It doesn't always have to be large applications with tens of thousands of items in the range."

Josef Apfelbeck Key Account Manager at Leuze electronic

Solutions for SMEs

Are very satisfied with what they have achieved so far (from left to right): Christian Hausner, Marc Steffen Dahlheimer and Josef Apfelbeck. Photo: Leuze electronic

Optoelectronic products play an important role here. The BCL 348i, AMS 348i and DDLS 500i solutions from Leuze electronic are used in high-bay warehouses with pre-storage zones and picking areas. The BCL 348i stationary barcode reader with Profinet interface performs complex tasks in conjunction with the AMS 348i optical distance measuring system. The barcode reader takes care of identification, while the AMS laser positioning system ensures the positioning of the storage and retrieval machines. The DDLS 500i is the first optical data transmission photoelectric sensor with an integrated web server for location-independent remote diagnostics. It makes it possible to wirelessly transmit data from industrial networks of moving system components in conveyor technology such as stacker cranes, gantry crane bridges or transfer cars.

The light barrier is used for optical data transmission of all Ethernet-based data protocols with a real-time transmission speed of up to 100 Mbit per second. "This project shows that warehouse automation also makes sense for medium-sized companies," says Josef Apfelbeck, Key Account Manager at Leuze electronic. "It doesn't always have to be the big applications with tens of thousands of items in the range." Bürkert is completely satisfied with what has been achieved so far. "Our customers are ordering the products more and more frequently and in smaller and smaller quantities," says Dahlheimer. "With the solution that has now been implemented, we have significantly reduced our throughput times and achieved shorter delivery times to the customer."

www.buerkert.dewww.sitlog.de www.leuze.de