A sophisticated and automated warehouse is key achieving CEO Mark Lu’s dream of opening up new business opportunities in the supply chain market.
Less than a year after the idea was first mooted, a new state-of-the-art automated warehouse was built and commissioned – and is already providing promising returns on investment.
“We realised there is a bigger picture than the normal standard warehouse and warehousing systems,” explains Eugene van der Walt, who has driven the automated warehouse project.
“Mark [Lu] had a good understanding of warehouse automation – this is not the first automated warehouse he’s built – so he knew the key points we were looking for, and where the flaws are in other systems.”
The idea behind the new venture was to provide a turnkey solution for customers. “We offer our customers the warehousing, storage and control of their distribution. We don’t make sales on their behalf, but we do the invoicing, inventory control and delivery to the customer’s door at the right time.
“It is very dynamic, and we can tailor-make processes for each customer.”
The warehouse itself has become something of a landmark on 16th Road in Midrand.
It boasts an impressive 1 306 square metres of floor space, with a massive 20 000 cubic metres in volume. It can store a total of 1 260 pallets, managed with a fully-automated storage and retrieval system.
Despite its size and array of technology, the warehouse took just six months to build, three months for the structure and three months for the racking and automation.
It’s a unique design, with no central column, that maximises the available floor space. “This made the erection of the racks a lot quicker and maximised the space,” Van der Walt says.
Steel for the racking, and equipment for the automation, arrived in 14 40-foot containers and was put together on-site.
“This is a first of its kind in South Africa,” Van der Walt points out. “There may be other automated warehouse systems but there is nothing like this.”
The actual construction was out of the ordinary too. “Four technicians, a local company supplying only 18 labour workers and I did the steelwork,” Van der Walt says. “We didn’t use a crane – the system is too delicate for that – but erected the racks with a forklift, a cherry-picker and guys with strong arms.
“There was a tremendous amount of precision engineering involved. Racking has to be dead accurate, to the millimeter, so that it lines up properly. We did have an engineer from the company that manufactured the steel to start off with, but a huge amount of South African ingenuity contributed to the speed and success of the build.”
Once the steelwork was in place, and the automated systems installed, another three months was dedicated to the software and warehouse management system (WMS).
The system was written specifically for ASML’s use and can be tweaked and refined as deployment rolls out.
“The system is live and running,” Van der Walt says. “So far we have perfected a way of storing the pallets, and are now working on outbound processes.”
The target market for the new business is customers in the liquor and associated products environment.
“These customers traditionally have issues around shrinkage, breakages, theft and mispicking,” Van der Walt points out. “With our automated system these figures are reduced to almost zero.
“Sure, the system won’t remove all mistakes, but it does do away with as many as humanly possible.”
Automating the warehouse means warehouse staff can do a lot more than previously, he adds. “We still have the same staff complement, but staff are now able to do different tasks because we have relieved them of stock handling.
“By taking away the forklift, and the paper-to-floor picking scenario, the picking process is now at least 10-times quicker than a manual system.”
The system also allows for batch picking, with the company’s ERP system sending a batch file to the WMS, which creates a batch pick. Pallets are delivered to a warehouse worker who consults a screen about what needs to be retrieved from each pallet. As the item is removed from the pallet its barcode is scanned – only if the correct product and quantity is scanned will the pallet be released.
The pallet is also weighed each time there is activity involving it, so there is a second check to confirm that its contents are correct.
“The system keeps track of each pallet and what is on it. Each product is barcoded and this is how each item is identified.”
The 1,2m x 1,2m pallets are customised for the products typically handled in the warehouse. Each pallet weight is limited to 800kg, and can be packed to 1,6m high.
The system determines where each pallet is stored in the six-story racking area. It is constantly maximising the storage used, and will store the products that are accessed most often in the most convenient spots.
The warehouse is currently about 60% populated. “So there is still a lot of room for growth,” Van der Walt says.
A four-way shuttle operates on each floor of the storage area, navigating itself using co-ordinates. “It knows where it stored each pallet, and what is on it,” Van der Walt explains.
The shuttles are battery-operated, and can work for 24 hours off an hours’ charge. Because they are smart devices, they will do stock rotation during off-peak times to maximise picking efficiency. They will also plug themselves in to charge when necessary.
They are self-correcting, and generate complete reports on their activities, and the movement of stock.
“This means we can give accurate statistics on all parts of the distribution process to the relevant farm,” Van der Walt says.
The system went live at the end of November, and staff are still tweaking processes to make it work as effectively as possible.
Overall, he is convinced that the new warehouse is going to change the way distribution is done in South Africa.
“This is what every distribution company needs. It reduces space and power usage, and cuts operating costs. In addition, theft and breakages are reduced to almost zero – which is a win for high-value stock items.”