Shuttle storage doubles throughput

With a turnover of 280 million euros backed by over 125 years of experience, Reyher is one of Europe”s leading distributors of fasteners and fixings, supplying customers worldwide from its 130,000 product lines.

To keep pace with continuing growth, the company has invested in a state-of-the-art automated stock replenishment and order-picking system at its Hamburg warehouse from where some 3,500 orders with up to 21,000 items are shipped five days a week.

“Absolute reliability of supply to our customers is the highest priority for us. We are committed to deliver 99 per cent of orders around the world in very short time scales five days a weeks, and our logistics system has to enable us to achieve that”, said Reyher’s managing director Dr Peter Bielert, explaining the rationale behind the investment and the new system.

The Hamburg premises occupy an area of over 40,000 m², the major part of which houses a state-of-the-art logistics centre with 60,000 pallet locations and 120,000 bin locations linked to a sophisticated materials management system that also enables the company to compile complete orders in one delivery. The order consolidation is now performed using a sophisticated shuttle system designed and installed by Gebhardt Fördertechnik, the parent company of Gebhardt European Conveyor Systems based in Nottingham. 

“Gebhardt appeared as a competent partner in the project tender phase as well as during the planning phase”, said Dr Bielert. “They contributed their own ideas for solutions and weren’t frightened off by the complexity of our logistics centre. They were willing to work closely with us and had a pragmatic approach to finding a solution that would work for us”.

The new system replaces a system involving two lifting beam cranes with a storage capacity of 2,500 containers and a throughput of 600 to 800 items/hr, and trolleys wheeled by personnel, all of which often compromised the delivery performance. The new solution permits transport of up to 1,800 containers per hour to the work-stations for order consolidation, more than doubling throughput and capacity and significantly reducing the impact of faults in the system.

At the heart of the new Gebhardt materials handling system are ten StoreBiter 300 multi-level shuttles (MLS) that supply the 17 work-stations with part-picked orders. The shuttles operate in two aisles, each 20 metres long, where they access 5,300 bins. One shuttle operates on each of the five levels in each aisle, each shuttle accessing four levels of bins, creating a total aisle height of about 9m. 

A special feature of the Gebhardt MLS shuttle system is its ability to serve several shelf levels without needing a separate lift because they incorporate an integral lifting function. This allows much more storage than a conventional single level shuttle. The shuttles are equipped with a multi-gripper handling mechanism to move the totes, stored double deep, in and out of storage. 

To enable Reyher to continue deliveries to customers throughout the installation of the new system, conversion took place step by step, with the previous system working temporarily alongside new equipment as it was gradually installed and commissioned. “The work was like open-heart surgery, as the plant continued to be in operation in spite of the conversion work”, said Thomas Engelhardt, Gebhardt”s project manager.

Finally, over the New Year holiday the old facilities were shut down entirely, and the shipping lanes and eight new work-stations came into operation. This enabled all the old equipment to be disassembled and the remaining new work-stations and conveyor technology connections to be installed.

“The professional, experienced Gebhardt team, good co-operation, short paths for decision-making and the involvement of Fritz Gebhardt himself all combined to produce the right, sometimes unconventional, solutions”, summarised Dr Bielert. “With the new equipment and more than twice the consolidation capacity, we are now able to process up to 1,800 items at any one time and we are ready for the next few years” growth”.