Maximise availability with proactive maintenance says Witron

The market constantly demands shorter and shorter delivery times, requiring maximum availability for state-of-the-art picking systems in distribution centres - 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Despite permanent operation, innovative and holistic maintenance concepts to avoid unplanned downtimes are required. Witron, the general contractor for logistics, opts for Predictive Maintenance in numerous distribution centres the company designed and built itself.

An important part of this is proactive maintenance based on extensive analysis of operating data. This is converted automatically and efficiently into maintenance orders for the maintenance team. Witron aims to make Big Data become Smart Data.

Smart Data is an initiative of the Federal Government of Germany that pursues the goal of improving Big Data technologies. Based on this high-tech strategy, Witron’s Think Tanks are creating leading-edge solutions allowing the conversion of a wealth of data into easily manageable information. 

“We are able to record data for all system components in detail: starting with the operating times of the conveyor system, the crane cycles, the run time of special machines, all the way to the cycle times of every single motor or sensor,” explains Florian Wittmann, who has been integrating ODC systems (Operation Data Capturing) for Witron for more than two years. Operation Data Capturing is the linking of system data with the maintenance management. Wittmann continues: “This is how we create a system-related maintenance concept for every customer. We automatically qualify, interpret, and convert the data into practical information, which optimises and controls the work of the maintenance team.”

Support Centre

The Witron Support Centre maintains more than 300 active service contracts. In addition, Witron is operating in more than 40 locations with its own OnSite Teams - service experts who permanently work within the customer’s facility - responsible for the maintenance and operation of highly automated logistics systems of various sizes, throughput, and industry sector. This creates a wealth of added value for the operators: permanent exchange of information and experiences between the Witron service experts, continuous improvement processes extending across locations, and consequently - higher availability and increased system performance. 

Another plus: Witron’s subsidiary, FAS, produces the conveyor system elements for the Witron projects. Thus, Witron can directly take advantage of the experiences from customers’ operation and put them into the development of new products.

Once a system has been put into operation and the initial maintenance of the components as recommended by the manufacturer has been carried out, Witron immediately starts with the recording of the operating data. “The goal is to shift away from an overall maintenance plan towards an individual plan with high efficiency and cost-effectiveness,” adds Wittmann. Although all the elements used in the Witron systems are largely standardised, they are nevertheless subject to varying degrees of operational usage. Products, run times, dynamics, peak days, temperature zones, climatic environmental conditions of the location - a variety of factors and parameters impact the wear and tear of the used technology. 

Spare parts strategy

“After just over a year of system operation, we have determined sufficient parameters to define an individual maintenance cycle for every component”, explains Wittmann. This results in an optimal spare parts strategy for the customer. “Based on forecast calculations, WITOOL provides an accurate recommendation on when a part needs to be exchanged pro-actively. At the same time, it predicts which spare parts have to be used when and in what quantities - or if they need to be restocked in time. Inefficient over- or under-maintenance as well as excess or shortage of spare parts are a thing of the past.” 

WITOOL is a web-based and practical Service Management Software developed by Witron. The software includes an integrated maintenance processing. In the field of service and maintenance, the trend goes clearly towards self-learning systems. It is about creating a comprehensive data pool, optimising processes with the existing data, identifying trends based on the available data and processes, and creating exact action recommendations for the maintenance team. WITOOL enables full transparency of all service and maintenance tasks. The most important dialogs are optimised for mobile use via tablets or smart phones.

Wittmann concludes: “We will not be able to completely eliminate downtime, since there is too much interference within a logistics centre - whether automated or manual. Defective pallets, defective packaging, breakage of goods, etc. However, 0% of unplanned repairs based on technical or mechanical errors - this is undoubtedly possible. And that is what we are working towards.”