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Three-fold increase in productivity

14.05.2013

orochemie modernizes AS/RS and expands its capacities with viastore as a partner

Since the existing warehousing capacity and system efficiency no longer satisfied the demands of orochemie, a supplier of disinfectants, cleaners, hand hygiene and skin protection products headquartered in Kornwestheim near Stuttgart, entrusted intralogistics specialist viastore systems with expanding and upgrading its warehouse facility. Now the WMS and the controls are state of the art too.

That characteristic smell at the dentist’s is there for a good reason: To ensure the protection of patients, the therapeutic devices and medical instruments as well as the examination rooms must be absolutely clean and disinfected. In most cases, products from market leader orochemie are used for this pur pose. The company was founded back in 1965 by Ludwig Pflug and Walter Dürr – names that are still strongly connected with it today. Since 2007, orochemie has been a constituent part of the Dürr Dental Group – Christian Pflug, son of co-founder Ludwig Pflug, is one of the two managing directors. orochemie’s success is based on the invention of “orotol”, a care and disinfection product for dental suction systems from Dürr Dental. Ever since then, orochemie has been continuously and systematically expanding its product range and aligned it with the technical solutions offered by Dürr Dental, a group of companies generating annual sales of about € 200 million. Thus the dental technology provider is in a position to offer a systematically structured range of products for targeted disinfection, cleaning and care of medical practices and laboratories under the designation Dürr System- Hygiene.

In the middle of the 1990s, the original headquarters of orochemie in Kornwestheim was bursting at the seams. The company, that employs around 120 people today, decided to have a new location built not far from the old premises. From there its products are shipped to destinations around the globe. “Most of our sales are handled via Dürr Dental. As a second pillar, we have our direct sales channel,” says Rüdiger Eppler, Member of the orochemie Management Board. Target groups include residential homes and nursing homes, for example. orochemie offers about 60 different products that are available in a wide range of different packaging and trading units – from 100-ml pump spray to bottles, cans and barrels. Together with the accessories, such as special application tools, this results in high product variation.

A storage/retrieval machine with transfer car for three aisles

The new building in Kornwestheim was put into operation in 1997. In addition to the administration offices and the production and filling lines, another significant constituent part was a three-aisle automated storage/retrieval system (AS/RS). Following the recent extension, this system is now operated within a temperature range suitable for pharmaceutical products. Back then, viastore had been chosen as general contractor for the ware house which was 40 meters long and about 20 meters high. The 2,264 pallet storage locations were serviced by a fully automatic viapal storage/ retrieval machine (SRM) that was transferred from one aisle to the other by a transfer car. “The performance of the system was absolutely sufficient for our requirements at that time,” says Rüdiger Eppler. As is still the case today, the ware house accommodated the raw materials for production, as well as the accessories, the packaging and shipping cartons and the finished goods. The different containers are supplied by the manufacturer in swap bodies, just in time and are staged at the filling lines in a route-optimized manner.

Goods receipt and goods issue on the same side

Originally the goods receipt and goods issue areas were arranged at the same front side of the AS/RS. The pallets were tendered to the SRM via conveyor system branch lines and the transfer car transported the SRM to the right aisle. The retrieval of raw materials and finished goods occurred the other way round so that both the raw materials and the finished products were standing in the front zone. “When inbound and outbound goods are handled via one and the same conveyor system, then this can quickly lead to bottlenecks,” explains Lars Breuer, Sales Project Manager Retrofits & Modernization at viastore systems. Rüdiger Eppler adds: “Things were also getting tight at the ramps, when delivery and collector trucks stood there at the same time.”

The raw materials were retrieved one level above the goods receiptpand issues area and transported to the front zone of the mixingpfacilities by means of a transverse shuttle car. From here the products got to the filling machines in the hall at the side of the AS/RS via piggable pipelines. “To avoid further bottlenecks in goods receipt and goods issue, we used to retrieve the packaging materials via a conveyor system lane that led directly from the middle of aisle one to the order picking area,” reports Rüdiger Eppler. So the materials arrive right where they were needed. The finished goods were brought to the AS/RS using the same route.

Capacity expansion planned early on

With orochemie’s increasing success and continuously expanding product range, the intralogistic processes were becoming more complex as well. “We therefore contacted viastore to discuss the expansion of capacities before we would face bottlenecks,” says Rüdiger Eppler, whose team had to cushion system peak loads more and more frequently with special shifts. The viastore planning department then recorded the actual status, analyzed the performance data and identified potentials. “Based on this, viastore pointed out two possibilities of how to increase our warehouse efficiency and capacity.”

With a view to future requirements, orochemie decided to extend all three aisles by 32 meters to 72 meters. This means that the number of pallet storage locations increased by 1,328 from 2,257 to now 3,585. “In this way, we also had the possibility to adapt the module height in the extension building to the new situation,” explains Rüdiger Eppler. Compared with 15 years ago, today fewer wire baskets are required for semi-finished goods than was the case back then. Instead there should be more locations for pallets with finished goods, which need to be higher. Moreover, each aisle was equipped with one viapal SRM having one ton of load carrying capacity – the existing SRM was modernized at the same time so that all machines are now at a uniform technical level. “All signs point to growth at orochemie. Our warehousing capacities are prepared for this.”

Decoupling of goods receipt and goods issue areas

The goods receipt and goods issue areas were decoupled: Goods receipt remained at the front side of the warehouse, while goods issue was relocated to the opposite end. This meant that the aisle transfer car was no longer required. Instead two transverse shuttle cars were installed – one for storage processes that take the pallets from the goods receipt conveyor system to the respective SRM, and one for retrieval processes which fetches pallets from the corresponding aisle and transports them to the goods issue lane. The lateral retrieval of packaging materials and shipment cartons was dismantled. “This provides space for further storage locations and brings about a further significant improvement in system performance since these products no longer have to be channeled through one single aisle,” explains Lars Breuer.

Fire protection: Prevention instead of fire fighting

Furthermore orochemie changed its fire protection concept. In the past, the warehouse would have been sprinkled in the event of fire. The water would have come from the water supply system. This would not have been sufficient for the enlarged system. “Following the warehouse expansion, we would have had to build a water reservoir of the size of a swimming pool,” Eppler says with a grin. “That wasn’t feasible.” As an alternative, the oxygen content in the air is now reduced to a continuous 13.4 percent by means of a redundant compressor system. This corresponds to the percentage at an altitude of about 4,000 meters. “Try to use a lighter and you will see that it doesn’t work.” The greatest advantage for orochemie: “Inertization means fire prevention while sprinklers mean fire quenching. But by then it is already too late,” Eppler puts it in a nutshell. The prerequisite for effective inertization was to make the building as air-tight as possible. “This was no problem because both the existing structure and the annex contained free-standing racks rather than being a rack-sup ported structure,” says Lars Breuer. “A critical factor was the wall openings for the conveyor system. Here we installed air-locks to make sure that as little air as possible is exchanged.”

WMS controls the production

Moreover, the warehouse management system (WMS), the material flow system (MFS) which was still based on DOS, and the control units were upgraded so that both software and hardware are now state of the art. Release 5.1 of the viad@t warehouse management system was converted to the latest WMS version, the PLCs were upgraded from S5 to S7, and the new IPC controlling the SRMs is now operating under Windows 7. “viad@t receives information directly from the Blending production plan- ning system from Infor,” explains Rüdiger Eppler. “If a specific prod uct is to be blended, then the WMS triggers the retrieval order for the raw materials. Then viad@t starts the second order for the necessary trading units in which the product is to be filled, and for the required packaging. Moreover the software controls the storage of finished goods, as well as the retrieval and order picking processes.” The finished goods are picked directly from the pallet, and they are shipped either by a forwarding agency or a CEP service provider.

New features for enhanced ergonomics and improved performance

The operators quickly familiarized themselves with the new viad@t generation. “The software logic has remained unchanged,” says Rüdiger Eppler, “But the surface is much more modern and ergonomic of course, and thus easy to use for our staff. The admin section too is very convenient to handle.” There are now some additional features that Eppler and his team wouldn’t like to be without any more. For example, lists and documents can be individually configured as required. Warehousing sections can be freely configured and new ones added quickly and easily; stra tegic replenishment definitions are not static and can be adapted to changes at any time – a basic necessity for such a dynamic company. orochemie also makes intensive use of the viad@t statistic tool. “It helps us to obtain valuable information about amounts, goods movements and utilization so that we can derive measures of how to further increase our efficiency,” Eppler sums up the benefits. In addition, viad@t manages the batches, the use-by dates of raw materials and finished goods as well as the storage locations to avoid the storage of incompatible substances alongside each other. Storage is according to the Fefo principle: The goods with the nearest expiration date are retrieved first.

Working during running operations

“It was fascinating to see how smooth the retrofit went ahead during running operations,” says Managing Director Eppler, clearly pleased. And all this despite considerable interventions in intralogistics. “We worked according to a strict and detailed schedule to maintain orochemie’s ability to supply throughout the upgrading activities at all times,” summarizes Veit Roskamp from viastore, who was in charge of project management.

Following the completion of the annex building and the link-up of the two warehouse sections, the last two rack locations at the transition to the extension building were emptied and closed for production operation – the existing SRM ensured uninterrupted warehouse operations and production supplies via the aisle transfer car. The viastore specialists then installed the new rack system, the crane rails and the steel platform on the goods issue end. Then the two new SRMs were positioned in the extension building’s aisles 1 and 2 via openings in the roof and installed together with the new contact lines and the WCS position measuring system. At the same time, the transverse shuttle car, the storage and retrieval lines to/from the AS/RS, the inbound and outbound lines including profile and overload checks as well as the conveyor system line outside the AS/RS between goods issue and order picking were all set up and equipped with security features such as air-lock housings, security fences and access doors. Moreover, two new fire protection gates including gate clearance controls and power stand-by were installed in this area. Then the SRM, the new conveyor control system in goods issue, the new MFS and the new WMS were put into operation. The last step of the first modernization phase consisted of extending the contact lines in the existing rack system and the commissioning of the two new SRM across the entire aisle length.

Goods permanently available during retrofit

During the second modernization phase, the entire storage and retrieval procedures were processed via the new goods issue area. This meant that at the goods receipt end it was possible to dismantle the aisle transfer car, the old conveyor system and the old lateral conveyor system connection for retrieving the raw materials for transport to the blending facilities as well as for taking the packaging materials to the pick and pack area. Supplies to the order picking area during this time were maintained, although with limited access periods, but thanks to good preplanning by orochemie and viastore this never posed any problem. The existing SRM in aisle 3 was modernized too: The on-board control cabinet including frequency converter was exchanged, the old contact line replaced and the new position measuring system installed. This was followed by the installation of the new steel platform at goods receipt level and the extension of the above platform, so that the new conveyor system, including transverse shuttle car, could be installed. At the same time, the old conveyor system in goods receipt was upgraded. Finally, the SRM and the conveyor system for the new goods receipt area were put into operation and the new MFS and WMS rolled out to the remaining system areas.

“Smooth collaboration with viastore”

“With the new system, we have almost tripled our throughput,” Rüdiger Eppler sums up. “Collaboration with viastore has been excellent, just as it was the case back in 1997.” In Eppler’s view, the sustainable success of the project is due not only to the higher efficiency and the improved work situation for the staff, but also to the integrated energy saving solutions. The energy released during SRM braking is immediately used for lifting the load handling device – the energy generated during lowering the lifting device is used for SRM acceleration. “Together with the photovoltaic system on our roof, we generate more than one third of our electricity requirements ourselves,” Eppler says, clearly pleased. But there’s no time to sit back and relax right now. Next year the production capacities are to be expanded as well. A new product line in the pharmaceutical area is being planned.



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