A WMS for Industry 4.0

Picking strategies will be fundamentally changed in the coming years with further automation," says Peter Schlechtinger, Project Manager at Würth Elektronik eiSos GmbH & Co KG, a company of the Würth Elektronik Group. "We are now laying the IT foundations for this by introducing a warehouse management system (WMS)." Five years have passed since this announcement. Since mid-2015, automation has been implemented in the central distribution warehouse of Würth Elektronik eiSos at the Waldenburg site. With its shuttle and Industry 4.0 implementations, the fully automated warehouse is now regarded by the company as a "model factory".

From Waldenburg, the company ships passive electrical components all over the world. More than 30,000 items are stocked there. On average, the employees pick around 2,000 orders with more than 4,500 items per day. A high-bay warehouse (HBW) with 5,000 pallet spaces, a new six-aisle automated small parts warehouse (AS/RS) with 86,000 shuttle-operated container spaces and four upstream repacking stations, highly dynamic conveyor technology, ten new picking stations where up to four orders are processed in parallel using pick-by-light and pick-to-light systems, as well as eight new packing stations where employees pack the order packages with shipping-optimizing case calculation, characterize the intralogistics processes today.

Low-risk strategy with fallback scenario

PSIwms from PSI Logistics GmbH forms the basis for processes in the Würth distribution center. "We planned the restructuring and automation in several stages and during ongoing operations," says Schlechtinger, explaining why the contract was awarded. "We therefore needed a highly flexible WMS." PSIwms has been installed at Würth Elektronik since February 2012. Previously, the warehouse and employee-to-goods picking were managed via an enterprise resource planning system (ERP). "This was unable to keep up with the increased number of orders with increasingly smaller orders and could not map the planned automation," explains Schlechtinger.

"In the past, the warehouse used to be a real bottleneck with high volumes. With PSIwms, order production is now not only faster, but also virtually error-free."

Peter Schlechtinger Project Manager Würth Elektronik eiSos GmbH & Co KG

In addition, the ERP system only provided stock quantity information. Functions for modern warehousing such as storage location and batch management or automated picking with batch and date code management according to the first-in-first-out (FiFo) principle were missing. "The new WMS should therefore initially underpin the changeover from manual warehousing to automated processes with data material in terms of information technology," says the project manager.

Based on the master data of all 30,000 articles, the order structure and demand, for example, the miniload and the conveyor line were designed. Among other things, PSI Logistics used PSIwms to create a "low-risk strategy". A risk-mitigating fallback scenario covered the gradual conversions that took place during ongoing operations. The basis for this was the adaptive scenario management in PSIwms. It can be used to check the process controls in advance of implementation and then switch operations to PSIwms at the touch of a button. In addition, the PSIwms function tool determines the optimized plant operation for the situation in real time from the current plant utilization and the pending orders - and automatically switches to the corresponding processing mode.

Standards and individual configurations separated

Fast and error-free picking instead of a "bottleneck": A modern WMS is in use at Würth Elektronik. Photo: PSI

The warehouse operator also benefited from the upgrade capability of the IT system during the gradually implemented expansion and modernization projects. This allows innovative functions to be incorporated into the standard through current releases. Special feature: During product development, PSI Logistics separates the product standards from the individual configurations. Advantage: When upgrading to a current release of PSIwms, the new functions of the system standard can be used, while the individual configurations for customer-specific adaptation are retained without programming effort and costs.

With two upgrades, Würth has kept PSIwms up to date with the latest technology over the past five years. And: Würth uses the latest system developments with the upgrade. These include, for example, the automatic recording of incoming goods and receipt of full cartons and individual products stored in containers on the conveyor system, which is integrated into PSIwms. During order picking, PSIwms at Würth also automatically identifies particularly sensitive semiconductors, optoelectronic components and electromechanical components using the stored master data. They are specifically fed to two separate, antistatic picking stations.

Several locations managed with one system

Another example of upgrade benefits: the holistic, cross-location coordination and control of warehouse processes and distribution. With its multi-site capability, PSIwms supports applications at several locations. This means that Würth can now use PSIwms to cover standard functions such as inventory and storage location management as well as the control and coordination of internal goods flows not only in the central warehouse. Thanks to the multi-site capability, Würth also manages the inventory management and order production for replenishment and order production for the Würth warehouse in Lyon, France.

"In the past, the warehouse used to be a real bottleneck when the volume was high," Schlechtinger sums up. "With PSIwms, order production is now not only faster, but also virtually error-free." In addition, the replenishment for the picking areas has been optimized. The multi-site capability also offers holistic coordination of stocks and order production at several locations. "This means that the logistics intelligence of our processes clearly lies in PSIwms," emphasizes Schlechtinger. "A solid basis for good development prospects. Its update and release capability also underline the future viability of the IT system and offer us long-term investment security. A solid IT basis for our development prospects."

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