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The cut-shapes centre on the voestalpine industrial site in Linz is known for its high-quality blanks for numerous customers in the mechanical engineering and steel construction sectors. Well-known manufacturers of injection molding and bending machines rely on the services of the voestalpine Steel Service Center GmbH cutting center. In addition to the site in Linz, there are two more production sites in Poland and Romania.
At voestalpine, there are divisional warehouse management systems (WMS) which are tailored to the respective requirements of the companies. As part of the 1SSC program, a project to implement a material tracking and warehouse management system was implemented for the first time with the help of ABF at the voestalpine cut-shapes centre, which should bring both cost and enormous time savings.
In a warehouse where hundreds of sheets are stacked on top of each other every day, the challenge of warehouse management is enormous. The picking and search teams spent a lot of time locating the different pieces of material and delivering them to the production line in the right order. Without an advanced warehouse management system (WMS), this not only leads to high personnel costs, but also to unnecessary paperwork. Inefficient processes can lead to machine downtime because the required material does not arrive at the right place on time which results in high costs.
The solution was automation. However, this did not necessarily mean that the warehouse had to be fully automated straight away. After all, a decisive step towards increasing efficiency is knowing exactly where the crane operator places the sheets. Relying on the crane operator to provide correct information to the WMS is not only time-consuming and impractical, but also risky, as errors are human and can quickly lead to incorrect bookings.
Manual material movements must be automatically recorded and documented by the system. This is the only way to make warehouse management transparent, automatic and reliable. This is where modern RTLS (Real-Time Location System) technology comes into play.
The ABF intralogistics suite OneBase®MFT was needed. The scope of delivery for the WMS included two functions, material tracking and material flow control. In the first step, material tracking was implemented so that every single sheet of primary material and finished product can be located in the halls of the cutting center. A particular highlight is that it is even possible to precisely locate the material within a stack.
At ABF, we developed an innovative solution over 15 years ago to transform existing cranes into “intelligent” means of transportation. By implementing an RTLS in conjunction with our WMS, we have enabled our customers to significantly optimize warehouse management.
In the cut-shapes centre, the manually operated stock cranes were upgraded by ABF with LPR® positioning technology (Local Positioning Radar) and an additional crane control system. This enables the exact position of a sheet pick-up or delivery to be determined for the automatic and correct booking of material movements. This is done independently of the crane operator and ensures that up-to-date information on stock levels is always available.
The intelligent monitoring of crane movements significantly reduces the workload of the search teams and ensures that the required material is always at the right place at the right time. This technology not only significantly reduces picking times, but also minimizes the error rate, resulting in faster and more efficient production.
The material flow control of the OneBase®MFT warehouse management system revolutionizes the way crane operators work by ensuring that the material is continuously brought to the correct place at the optimum time. To further increase efficiency, a connection to the SAP ERP was established, which enables the WMS to control transport and supply the production facilities in a time-optimized manner.
In a significant step towards optimizing warehouse management, the optimized control of the manual cranes was successfully implemented using our software solution OneBase®MFT. The integration of the existing hardware and system landscape was seamless. The direct connection to the SAP ERP system significantly improved the efficiency of communication between the systems compared to the old system. The processes are now being revolutionized by digitalization. The supply of the production facilities is now continuous and system-supported. The warehouse operating personnel were particularly impressed by the 3D visualization with grid display. This function makes it particularly easy to search for panels in the visual warehouse display.
The mobile application of the crane guidance system is used to operate the manual cranes, which enables precise material tracking by integrating the crane sensors. The improved visualization of the warehouse stock using a 3D display and a fully configurable display of order and warehouse data adapted to customer requirements provide operators with all relevant information at a glance. These measures make a decisive contribution to increasing intralogistics efficiency and optimizing processes throughout the entire system.
The implementation of our new system brings numerous advantages to the warehouse of the cutting center. One of the features is the improved use of storage space, which has been achieved by creating a continuous material flow in the warehouse. With our intelligent OneBase®MFT Warehouse Manager, we can use the existing transport resources more efficiently and make optimum use of the warehouse capacity.
Another important aspect is the improvement of occupational safety. Our rule engine enables us to identify critical overloads in individual warehouse areas at an early stage and react accordingly, which clearly contributes to the safety of warehouse employees.
However, the biggest advantage of this implementation is the significant time and cost savings that the voestalpine Steel Service Center Group’s cut-shapes centre can now achieve thanks to the optimized processes. Thanks to the automation and increased efficiency in warehouse management, processes can now be streamlined and resources deployed in a targeted manner.
To summarize, the automation of processes and the improvement of traceability take warehouse performance to a new level.
