Manufacturer unveils plan for automated DC

Witron is general contractor on the project and will provide IT, control engineering and mechanical components.

The facility is designed to help Festo expand in the US market. 

Andreas Wiebe, project coordinator at Festo says: "Availability of goods and short delivery times are top priorities in our industry sector. All articles ordered today have to be received by our customers next day.”

Festo will install Witron's standard module OPS (Order Picking System) which will be adapted to Festo’s requirements. The manufacturer carries more than 18,000 different products such as drives, motors, controllers, valves, sensors, and image processing systems.

The DC will include seven high-efficiency pick workstations including the corresponding, downstream packing stations. The stations were developed according to strict ergonomic specifications. Every workstation is able to pick up to four customer orders at the same time. Moreover, a pick-by-light system and an integrated scale ensure a very high pick quality. Thus, it is possible to pack a total of up to 500 customer packages without any errors at a peak day and ship them in a timely manner.

A ten-aisle AS/RS with 73,000 locations, designed for different tote sizes, provides the picking and packaging area with goods over a conveyor system network. Integrated sequence buffers ensure a sequence-friendly provision of the ordered goods at the workstation and an optimal workload of the pick and pack locations. At the same time, these sequence buffers decouple the AS/RS stacker cranes from the picking sequence.