Printing machine manufacturer Kammann has a new production site in Löhne. A building complex with 8,000 square meters of hall space and 3,000 square meters of office space has been created. In addition, more than 2,100 square meters of storage space was set up directly next to the assembly hall to ensure an optimal supply of the required components for production. "We mainly build packaging finishing machines that print on hollow containers such as bottles, cans or flacons using screen or digital printing," explains Gerhard Drews, Head of IT at Koenig & Bauer Kammann GmbH. "For this purpose, 13,000 different stock items are kept in our logistics center alone. As required, the assembly stations are also supplied with articles in cross docking directly from the incoming goods department."

Around 22,600 storage locations are managed in the Kammann logistics center. The range of articles extends from cable blanks, pneumatic parts and linear technology such as running rails to drives for the printing machines. The warehouse is divided into a two-aisle narrow aisle warehouse with a total of 1,250 pallet spaces, which are occupied by up to three transport units per pallet, a pallet rack with 180 spaces, a cable rack with 120 spaces for cable drums, a cantilever warehouse with 540 support arms and 18 shuttle tray warehouses from Kardex with a total of around 15,000 storage compartments in eight different dimensions on the trays.

With the move to the new plant location in Löhne, internal production logistics were to be optimized and warehouse management and coordinated process control supported through the use of a modern warehouse management system. Koenig & Bauer Kammann (KBK) has been supporting the PSI Group's PSIpenta enterprise resource planning system (ERP) as a platform for intelligent production since 2007.

Optimally coordinated process control

After an intensive comparison of providers, the warehouse management system PSIwms was chosen. "We had already had good experience with PSI software through PSIpenta," says Drews. "PSIwms also impressed us with its standard connection to PSIpenta and extensive functional system standards." With PSIpenta as a superimposed software system for production planning and control and PSIwms for coordinated process control in storage, picking and production supply, Koenig & Bauer Kammann has a conflict-free, integrated IT infrastructure from material receiving to production and shipping. A consistently integrated system concept with a uniform IT infrastructure opens up further potential for optimization, efficiency and cost reduction. This ranges from the combined use of the functionalities of the ERP system to the coordinated process control of automated material flow components or forklift-based picking in intralogistics.

As a data-driven ERP system for administration and production, PSIpenta/ERP handles the company-wide planning, management and control of business management tasks as well as the efficient use of various company resources such as materials, personnel, capacities, capital and information. PSIwms is installed for the optimally coordinated control of complex logistics processes. Due to the same technological basis in the common development platform of the PSI Java Framework (PJF) established throughout the Group and the modular design of the standard products, it fits seamlessly into the production planning processes of PSIpenta/ERP without the conventional interfaces.

Semi-automatic narrow-aisle stacker connected

The innovative PSI click design allows the graphical user interface (GUI) to be customized. Supported by an intuitive visual editor, users can adapt the user interface for the systems completely flexibly and independently to their individual workflows by clicking and dragging and dropping. This offers maximum transparency and a perfect overview of current processing statuses.

Full pallets are stored and retrieved using a semi-automatic narrow-aisle forklift from Jungheinrich. For the forklift-based transports, the integrated forklift control system (SLS) Transport Control in PSIwms ensures route-optimized forklift activities in cooperation with a downstream material flow computer with Jungheinrich Logistics Interface. PSIwms addresses the forklift via telegrams to the material flow computer and transmits the destination location, which is automatically controlled by the forklift. The goods are transferred there and the transfer/removal is acknowledged via a mobile data terminal connected to PSIwms. The forklift truck then receives the signal for the next transport order.

The two- or three-stage manual picking for the material supply to the assembly stations is also controlled from PSIwms via radio data transmission. Eleven assembly stations in the production hall have to be supplied with separate deliveries in different combinations. The order pickers either remove the goods directly from the pallet on the shelf or, if the required item is too heavy or too bulky, for example, they first take the complete pallet to another picking station. Once the material has been removed, the pallet is put back into storage. In the next optimization step, the tray warehouse with the 18 shuttles will also be integrated into the coordinated process control by PSIwms.

Every month, the employees at the KBK logistics center pick around 6,000 outgoing goods items for production supply. PSIwms therefore offers further capacity reserves with a WMS performance of around 70 percent. "When selecting the system, we focused on conflict-free communication between ERP and WMS as well as reliable long-term IT support for our warehouse processes," summarizes Drews. "In the two and a half years since implementation, PSIwms has been able to meet these requirements without any problems. The system ensures secure, reliable process control, flexibility and transparency in our intralogistics. Our expectations have therefore been fully met."

This article appeared in issue 4/23