B&R automates its intralogistics centre

01 February 2010

During the recent plant expansion at B&R’s headquarters in Eggelsberg, Austria, a fully automatic high bay warehouse was constructed using control, visualisation and drive technology from B&R. The high bay warehouse has a total area of 6,600 sq. m., a shelf height of over 19 m, a shelf length of 72 m and a capacity of 18,000 palettes.

Shelves are 19m high, and 72m long
Shelves are 19m high, and 72m long

Five aisle-guided storage/retrieval machines ensure fully-automatic handling. The machines can work on both sides of an aisle.

Warehouse engineers say three hundred euro palettes can be stored and/or retrieved per hour.

The storage/retrieval machines are linked with eight commissioning stations that provide automatic transport of the palettes in both directions using material handling systems.

B&R’s X20 control and I/O system is used to control the system, which includes X20 SafeLOGIC and X20 SafeIO components in a decentralised layout based on POWERLINK safety.

For system visualisation, the operators use B&R Automation Panels. The entire system and also individual system parts can be seen from each operator station.

From any location, modern remote maintenance mechanisms allow complete system diagnostics information including active system status information down to the individual I/O channels and drives to be sent via text message or e-mail.

High bay warehouse is in the background
High bay warehouse is in the background

Power regeneration saves 1/3

All of the drives for the storage/retrieval machines and the material handling systems are equipped with servo technology from B&R.

Euro palettes weighing up to 1000 kg are precisely positioned over a total distance of 72 m with acceleration values of 2.5 m/sec2.

The energy efficiency is an important advantage. It is estimated that power regeneration on the B&R servo drives reduces energy costs during daily operation by about 1/3.

Direct link to SAP

SAP R/3 LES (Logistic Execution System) is used to manage stock and control the flow of materials.

Control cabinet for intralogistics centre
Control cabinet for intralogistics centre

The controllers for the storage system are linked directly to the SAP system using the SAP R/3 module TRM (Task and Resource Management).

The extra material flow computer that is normally used is not required, and neither are high-maintenance data interfaces with double storage of item and stock data.

Planning the order in which tasks are carried out and defining all storage and retrieval strategies are done exclusively in SAP R/3 and can be quickly adjusted to changing logistics requirements.

Stock movements are processed with SAP on B&R Automation PCs at stationary commissioning stations, and in-house transport is controlled and acknowledged using mobile data acquisition devices, which ensures that the current status of product movements is known at all times.

The intralogistics centre was implemented by TGW Systems Integration GmbH.



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