Automated clad-rack warehouse

Warehouse operations are fully automated and ensure maximum agility of incoming and outgoing goods, as well as a higher productivity. With this investment, the company consolidates its expansion in Europe and is prepared to strengthen its growth rate in the future.

Kern Pharma is one of the leading suppliers of hospitals and pharmacies in Spain, with a production that yearly exceeds 100 million units.

The company needed to expand its manufacturing centre located in Barcelona to efficiently provision all its customers and, in turn, to be prepared to cope with forecasted growth rates.

In the same installation, different load units are deposited (pallets and boxes), with distinct turnovers and characteristics that require specific curation. For this reason, the pharmaceutical firm requested the collaboration of Mecalux in finding the solution that would best solve their needs.

Mecalux built a new, 2,000 sq m clad-rack warehouse measuring 26m high and 84m long. It consists of five aisles with single-depth racking on both sides with a deposit capacity of more than 10,000 pallets, and another aisle, attached to the existing warehouse, where more than 9,700 boxes are housed.

In each aisle, the stacker cranes are designed to locate and extract pallets and boxes from the racks. The movement of this equipment is managed by the Mecalux Galileo control programme connected to the ERP and warehouse management software of Kern Pharma.

The clad-rack warehouse is an integral construction formed by the racking themselves on which the outer sheathing is fixed. When calculating the structure, experts take into account its own weight, that of the stored goods and external forces such as the wind, snow, the thrust of the stacker cranes and even the degree of seismicity corresponding to each territory, as well as local regulations in the country. The advantage of this type of facility is the height optimisation to achieve massive storage capacity.

Miniload aisle installation

In the warehouse, an aisle was enabled and set aside to deposit boxes of Kern Pharma products. Single-deep racks consist of 36 levels, reaching 20m in height.

The miniload installation provides the functions that best meet the logistical requirements of the company. It has a twin-column stacker crane that operates at a speed of 220 m/min and 60 m/min when raised, obtaining an optimum flow of incoming and outgoing goods in the warehouse.

The stacker crane incorporates an extraction system with forks, the most widely used in the market. These are inserted through the bottom of the boxes and removed or placed in locations on both sides of the aisle. The cradle has the capacity to handle two cases at once.

Pallet storage aisles

Currently, there are four, 72m long aisles in operation. The single-deep racks, on both sides, accommodate more than 8,000 pallets of 800 x 1,200 x 1,350/1,800mm with a maximum weight of 1,000kg.

Moving elements (conveyors and stacker cranes) are protected by metal enclosures and optical barriers that prevent access by unauthorised personnel.

In each aisle, the stacker cranes are responsible for transferring the pallets between input and output conveyors and their corresponding location on the racks in the same motion (called combined cycle), which increases the productivity of the installation.

Warehouse inputs and outputs

The entry and exit of warehouse goods are carried out on two different levels to avoid interference between the two operations. Receptions are on the same level as the manufacturing plant.

AGVs collect and deposit pallets on incoming warehouse conveyors. The dispatch area is located on the upper level. Operators, with the help of front loading forklifts, remove pallets from the outgoing conveyors. These are protected by specialised structures to prevent any damage.

Software

The warehouse is equipped with different software that work concurrently to improve the throughput of all processes that take place inside it, including the receipt of goods, storage, dispatch and output of the products.

The Galileo software's mission is to control the movement of unit loads within the warehouse. It gives orders to the various devices within the installation and also monitors compliance with safety measures.

It gives orders to the various devices within the installation and also monitors compliance with safety measures. It is in direct and permanent connection with other programmes involved in the installation to optimise all logistics processes conducted.