In the Bosch Mobility Solutions business sector, the Automotive Aftermarket division from Karlsruhe manages the worldwide provision, logistics and sale of automotive spare parts, workshop equipment, services and Bosch products for retrofitting.

End-to-end concept
By 2022, the company will invest a total of 100 million euros to expand its warehouse capacity, modernize its warehouse technology and material flow and reduce throughput times. Between 2013 and 2015, several extensions were built with a total of around 15,000 square meters of storage space. Following a joint planning phase, the Quickstore HDS automated small parts warehouse (AKL) from Vanderlande was delivered and installed. The complex system offers 226,800 container storage locations and was gradually put into operation. A total of 86,000 different articles are stored in the HDS, which are dispatched in normal and fast shipping. The individual systems of the project were and are being implemented and set up during ongoing operations. The new logistics center will be completed by the end of 2022.

What convinced Vanderlande to be selected as the general contractor and implementation partner for the shuttle storage system, the sorting and conveyor technology and the outgoing goods department? "Vanderlande presented a well-founded and detailed approach and a coherent concept during the design and tender phase," explains Mark Luehrs, overall project manager at Bosch.

The heart of the system
Luehrs on the reasons for choosing the HDS system: "As a result of our planning, a miniload shuttle system emerged as the best technical solution for our requirements. As the dynamic requirements did not necessitate the use of a shuttle on each level, a multi-level system was considered; the HDS represents this solution, as it can store both 600 x 400 mm and 600 x 800 mm containers double to triple-deep." There are currently 14 picking stations installed downstream of the HDS, which will in future take over the previously separate functions of picking and packing. As Luehrs explains, "great importance was attached to ergonomics when designing the workstations." Together with Bosch, Vanderlande developed picking stations specially tailored to Bosch. Luehrs cites "the triple-deep storage of containers weighing up to 50 kilograms as a particular challenge in the implementation of the HDS. In addition, the warehouse had to be designed to accommodate two different container types, namely conical (800 x 600) and cubic (600 x 400)."

Supply of the HDS from the high-bay warehouse
In terms of the future process, the articles transported from the high-bay warehouse on pallets and repacked into containers at 21 depalletizing stations of the HBW are transported to the picking warehouse. Basically, all containers travel to the shuttle warehouse and are stored there, as the HDS is responsible for stocking the 14 workstations where the orders are then picked into the shipping cartons. The filled bins travel together to a separate storage loop that is separate from the retrieval bins. Where traditionally several loops are required due to the capacity, a special arrangement of the infeed and outfeed to the shuttle aisles has made it possible to transport the 5,000 or so containers into the shuttle warehouse with just one high-performance sorter (Posisorter).

High tower storage capacity
The main objective is to ensure that there are always enough article containers available at the 14 picking workstations, which are currently arranged on two levels one above the other. This is ensured by conveyor buffer lines and tower storage systems developed by Vanderlande for intermediate buffering and sequencing installed in front of the workstations. They also offer the advantage that the items can not only be sorted according to order, but also pre-sorted by weight. "The tower storage systems are important for us so that we get the performance we need to the picking stations and there is no waiting time for employees when changing containers," says Luehrs. "The weight-based sorting of the picking containers according to the categories heavy, medium and light is worth its weight in gold," emphasizes Marcus Stampf, project manager for the Diskus project, "because this saves unproductive sorting in the package." The on-screen dialog informs the employee which items to remove from the containers and place in the carton. Once the picking process from a container is complete, it is automatically removed and the next one is transported. As the carton is placed on a scale, it can be verified after each confirmed picking process whether the pick was carried out correctly. The carton is then transported to the outgoing goods area.

Successful partnership and cooperation
"The project and the extremely cooperative partnership with Bosch represent a milestone in Vanderlande's company history," sums up Dr. Markus Ehrmann, Managing Director of Vanderlande Industries GmbH in Mönchengladbach. "The project, with its gigantic size and complexity, was made for Vanderlande."