Efficient system automates service center’s storage and retrieval and machine feed lines while safeguarding product quality
Above: “We developed a concept using robots able to feed multiple saws,” says Fehr Warehouse Systems President David Veldung
February 2023- Efficient system automates service center’s storage and retrieval and machine feed lines while safeguarding product quality
How does one use nearly every square inch of space—height, width, length—and quickly and accurately pull down the exact piece of material needed to fill an order?
Stürm SFS—a Swiss service center that carries aluminum and carbon and stainless steel sheet and plate, bars, structural products, tubing and specially shaped profiles—used an automated solution for storing long products from 2 to 7.5 meters long (6.5 to 24.7 feet long), according to Thomas Lehner, managing director for Fehr Switzerland.
“Their main purpose was to feed the sawing department. The system picks and drops material at the saws,” he says. Finished goods are distributed to customers across virtually every metalconsuming sector in the European Union.
Stürm SFS has two automated storage and retrieval systems (ASRS). One is a honeycomb storage system from Fehr Warehouse Solutions, installed roughly five years ago. The company also used an older system from a competitor, but that was replaced with a new Fehr system at the end of 2022. The newest system replaces an existing stacker crane with a Fehr stacker crane, says Fehr President David Veldung “We developed a concept using robots able to feed multiple saws. It can pick from flat stock, bar and tubes out of a cassette storage system to the feeding tables,” then take the remnants back to storage.
HEAVY DUTY
The new system can handle bars from 12 mm up to 110 mm (1/2 inch 41/3 inch) and weights from 1 kg to 450 kg (2 pounds 3 ounces to 992 pounds)—“which is very very heavy,” says Lehner. The new system has 3,800 locations, and each location can hold 3 metric tons.
Stürm SFS has several bays of stored material.
The new ASRS system at Stürm SFS has 3,800 locations, and each location can hold 3 metric tons
“They used to have everything lying on the floor and an overhead crane,” with workers “walking material to a particular saw. The new honeycomb system goes 25 meters high (82 feet), 60 meters long (196 feet), and the robot in the middle serves all the locations,” Lehner explains.
Each cassette is delivered to specific work stations. The robot picks the material out of the cassette and places it on the saw. “There are eight work stations around the system, and each one has a specific purpose: order picking, loading, sawing,” he says.
CONNECTIVITY
In addition to the automation, Fehr offers warehouse management system software, which can directly connect to customers’ processes. That means “direct from a sales associates to a customer, trying to sell cut material, then directly down to the sawing department,” Lehner says, adding, “there is no human interference in between. It is a complete hands-free operation from sales to a finished part. We can automate, palletize and prepare the order for shipping.”
The automated storage and retrieval system can fit any space by height, width and length, up to 30 meters high
WASTE NOT, WANT NOT
Alongside its Fehr ASRS, Stürm SFS uses Opticut software from Fehr. It’s a cross-order cutting optimization program that is used to fulfill orders more efficiently.
“If the length of a remnant piece matches a length that the company has sold before, [the Opticut software] can predict if the remnant is scrap or if it can be used for a future order,” Veldung explains. “So there is a lot of forecasting based on the material [feedstock] and the material that has been cut.”
A user can look at all the historical data and decide that even three different remnants can be combined to make a finished product. “Maybe you have a 12-inch bar but you have never sold that size, but you also have one 24-inch bar.” The saw operator is advised to “use the one where you get a usable remnant after it is cut.” The entire programming—cutting optimization, loading and unloading saws—is all automated so a 24/7 lights-out production is a viable option, Veldung says.
INVENTORY CONTROL
According to Lehner, Fehr’s honeycomb ASRS system is “the most compact way to store material. You use every inch and can go up to 30 meters in height. It’s not only using floor space and height. We offer 100 percent inventory control,” he notes. “The system requires a lot less manpower for picking. If you have a heat number that a customer requires, the machine operator doesn’t have to go out in the warehouse to find it; he just types it in and the material is brought to him in 90 seconds.” Many service centers seek to use first in/ first out (FIFO) inventory practices. But “when you have bundles on the ground, the bottom bundle always stays the oldest.” With a Fehr system, “you weigh every piece of material going in and out, and that provides a 100 percent accurate view of your entire stock. Cycle counting is obsolete.”
QUALITY CONTROL
The Fehr system will help users to avoid wrongly delivering orders. “We weigh each tray and so it’s almost impossible to deliver material” to customers that doesn’t meet their specifications, says Veldung.
Using the cassettes, cranes and robots, “you almost eliminate product damage.” He cites a customer in Mexico who saved money on labor but product quality suffered. “They bought two systems and the return on investment was only two years due to undamaged material.”
Lehner concurs. “This is a big advantage. You don’t have a truck hitting the rack ends. You don’t drop material; you don’t lose material. People just click on buttons [to choose items from inventory] and they don’t have to see every bundle because the right material comes to them.”
TURNKEY
Based in Winterthur, Switzerland, Fehr opened a facility in the United States in 2017, and has since installed 11 systems in the U.S. and over 400 worldwide, says Veldung.
Training with the Fehr ASRS “starts during commissioning” and includes machine operators and maintenance personnel. “Once we leave, the operator knows how to run the system, retrieve orders and put material away.” It takes a couple weeks to learn the system. “We tell our customers that we won’t leave until you know it,” he says.
Fehr offers turnkey installation. “We can even hire a general contractor to do the concrete foundations. We install the racks and the crane system. We do electrification and hand it over complete,” says Veldung.
Cost estimates “vary widely based on how many stations, how many cranes, how many storage units are needed and whether it is a new build or a retrofit.” One customer calculated that its return on investment would take four years. “They shaved off more than a year from that,” says Veldung, which he attributes to “so many cost-saving factors: optimized material flow, fewer operators, less traffic, more orders out the door and so on.” MM
