Automotive manufacturing and logistics
The automotive sector has a natural attraction for everything and everyone dealing with logistics. It includes components, finished automobiles and service parts, from factory floor to dealer forecourt and everything in between. Vanderlande Industries has broad experience in different areas of automotive logistics: Just-in-time systems for delivery to assembly lines, spare parts logistics and handling systems for car tyres and wheels.
Tyre handling
Van Den Ban, a leading tyre wholesaler, is building a new distribution centre in Hellevoetsluis (Netherlands) to support its strong business growth. They selected us to design and implement an automated tyre handling system in their new distribution center. The system is based on a batch picking and order consolidation system for dynamically handling thousands of tyres per hour. The total storage capacity is 1,5 – 2 mio. tyres. They expect to improve efficiency, delivery quality and customer service. The new system became operational in Spring 2009.
Wheel handling
Audi redesigned its logistics process for the Just-in-Sequence supply of complete wheels to its assembly lines. Complete wheels are fully automatically assembled, geometry-checked, balanced and made available in the right sequence for the production lines. A QUICKSTORE-based AS/RS system plays a major role in the whole process. The wheels produced in this factory are supplied to both the Ingolstadt production facility, as well as to Karmann in Osnabrück, where convertibles are built.
Automotive spare parts logistics
For Daimler, an automated warehouse was built in Hatten (Germany) for worldwide spare parts logistics for Smart cars. Spare parts volumes are growing very fast. Service levels must be very fast and reliable. Daimler realised it had to invest in a new automated warehouse to handle its logistics challenges. The system consists of a tote conveyor system and QUICKSTORE miniloads (AS/RS) for order consolidation. The total goods inventory consists of 100.000 different articles with an average of 4.000 orderlines delivered every day. The system resulted in high availability of spare parts, automatic inventory control and efficient goods turnover.