Founded in 1885 as "Deutsche Amphibolin-Werke von Robert Murjahn", the family-owned company DAW SE is now one of the largest manufacturers of building paints in the world with 5,600 employees and an annual turnover of 1.3 billion euros. The DAW group of companies unites brands such as "Alpina" for the do-it-yourself sector or "Caparol" and "Disbon" for facade protection of private and commercial properties or cultural monuments.

According to DAW, the careful use of resources and the protection of the environment are important cornerstones of the company's policy. This requires efficient logistics processes, which DAW is now updating at its headquarters in Ober-Ramstadt, Hesse: Previously spread across numerous buildings on the factory premises, incoming and outgoing goods, logistics and warehousing will in future be combined in three new buildings. In addition to a high-bay warehouse with space for 30,000 pallets, the new distribution center includes a logistics building and an automated AutoStore small parts warehouse with a capacity of up to 12,000 containers located right next to it.

The shortest route to storage
"The AutoStore solution will help us to pick orders with individual small quantities even more effectively in future," says project manager Jörg Martin from DAW SE. Jörg Martin cites the high availability of the system, the automated provision of goods and the possibility of building modular constructions as advantages of AutoStore: "In order to make the transport routes for replenishment as simple as possible, we place the workstation for storing the products right next to the high-bay warehouse," explains Martin. If required, the pallets loaded with new goods are automatically transported from the high-bay warehouse to the transfer point. Once the products have been stored, the filled containers are then automatically returned to the small parts warehouse in the other part of the hall. DAW project manager Jörg Martin: "This solution saves us time and money because the AutoStore containers are much easier to move back and forth than comparatively bulky and heavy pallets." With the proposal to reorganize storage and retrieval, AM-Automation was ultimately able to prevail over other AutoStore providers as a DAW supplier.

The construction of the new DAW distribution center will take place during ongoing operations and is expected to be completed in early 2022. In addition to the design and integration of the AutoStore system, AM-Automation is also supplying the control system for integrating the pallet conveyor technology in the high-bay warehouse area. The AutoStore system will initially be equipped with six R5 Redline robots and has three picking workstations.