Logistics retrofit at ENGEL AUSTRIA successfully completed

While large machines are manufactured in St. Valentin in Austria, the headquarters in Schwertberg specializes in small and medium-sized machine production . The assembly stations are supplied with the required components via the affiliated central warehouse, which was commissioned about 20 years ago . At the same time, it is used for stocking and shipping spare parts. "The proverbial ravages of time made themselves felt recently," reports Warehouse Manager Hannes Leitner. "Plant availability was declining and the effort required for spare parts procurement was no longer up to date. At the same time, we were required to adapt the processes to the increasing production figures and prepare the technology for new requirements, such as the integration of tugger trains."

The expectations of the future planning and retrofit partner were correspondingly high. "IGZ clearly presented the most suitable overall concept for us," affirms Joachim Metzmacher, CPO of the ENGEL Group. "We were directly convinced by the approach of carrying out a retrofit analysis in advance of the planning and carrying out the modernization and migration in several stages." Another decisive factor was that the SAP engineers from the Upper Palatinate were able to plan and implement both the plant technology and control system and the introduction of SAP EWM including material flow control with SAP MFS (SAP Material Flow System) from a single source. Interfaces could thus be avoided. After all, ensuring continued warehouse operations even during the modernization was the top priority. "With our portfolio at IGZ, we have the optimal setup for modernizations, expansions and new buildings with SAP EWM/MFS. Thus, in-depth planning and realization of migrations under our overall responsibility are part of our daily business. We were able to successfully bring these to ENGEL," says Alfred Meyer, Managing Director of IGZ.

In addition, there were further restrictions: The principle of feeding and consolidating requested parts from the miniload and high-bay warehouse via conveyor technology proved to be ineffective. Instead of starting statically at a fixed point, the pick orders should be able to be started at any point and dynamically consolidated via route trains. There was also room for improvement in terms of ergonomics, and the proprietary warehouse management system offered no further development options. "The quintessence was, among other things, to implement the goods-to-person principle in order picking and to create one redundant warehouse pre-zone each for the small parts warehouse and the high-bay warehouse," explains IGZ project manager Robert Bauer. "The forced chaining that created dependencies also had to be eliminated, and different pick starts taking into account area loads, assembly cycles, incoming goods buffering and deduction were to be possible in the future." In addition, it should be possible to prioritize spare parts orders, allow ad-hoc withdrawals, and initiate transfer deliveries. Last but not least, a new container concept with insert boxes was planned to increase the filling level of the miniload.