Project report Häcker Küchen

Kitchen manufacturer Häcker, founded in 1938, has its production facilities in Rödinghausen, Westphalia, where 750 employees work in over 105,000 square meters of production area building kitchens under the brands classic and systemat for kitchen retailers. 

After extensive process planning, S&P Computersysteme GmbH implemented the application software for the warehouse management computer and provided all the extended customer-specific SuPCIS warehouse management modules needed for the operation of the new facility. Over what has now become over 10 years of collaboration, S&P is now a reliable partner for adjustments, reorganisations and extensions.

In the meantime, in addition to Plant 2 described below, the logistics for Plant 1 and, since 2007, also Plant 3, are managed and controlled by SuPCIS-L.

The hardware and operating system platform was migrated from IBM AIX to HP-UX.

S&P also provided all the AutoID equipment needed for operation of the intralogistics, such as wireless LAN, mobile handheld and forklift terminals, thermal direct printers (including mobile printers) and barcode scanners.

Häcker also relies on the support of S&P help desk personnel during operation of their logistics and can therefore count on the shortest possible response times in case of an error. In addition to logistics for fronts, body parts (by forklift control system) and accessory parts (by paperless picking) are also controlled through the S&P warehouse management system.

New in 2007:

In Plant 3 for buffering and supply of production, the warehouse management system automatically fills the trays in a tray storage warehouse with replenishments for upcoming days, and they are automatically removed by picking robots.

Front picking

• 11-aisle high bay warehouse for fronts and tower unit sides
• 4-aisle picking warehouse with picking carts for fronts
• Single-aisle picking warehouse with picking carts for sides and floors, with a picking zone in one aisle of the high bay warehouse that is fully automated using picking robots

All picking areas are replenished with pallets from the high bay warehouse as needed.

Rolling rack buffer

-  1 fully automated 4-aisle buffer warehouse to buffer the rolling racks for fronts

-  Storage of empty rolling racks

-  Storage of full rolling racks

-  "A full rolling rack contains front parts for different customers that will soon be processed in production"

The host computer plans the filling of the rolling racks. Filling of a rolling rack corresponds to a picking order.

These picking orders can be broken down into:

-  Main production racks

-  Preproduction racks - the parts are picked onto one or more main production racks after preproduction

-  Assembly preproduction racks

-  Rework racks

The picking orders are started entirely automatically by the warehouse management system according to the processing schedule in Assembly/Preassembly. Each started picking order is assigned to a rack from the rack buffer

Front picking onto rolling racks:

-  A parts are picked in the picking warehouses

-  SC parts are picked in the picking zone right next to the high bay warehouse

Tower units

-  Picking by robots onto pallets in the high bay warehouse

Sides/floors

-  Picking onto pallets in the U area

-  The warehouse management system specifies all picking destinations for the rolling racks

-  10 storage locations on the ground floor and 10 on the upper floor of the high bay picking zone, all equipped for PTL

-  One transfer station per aisle in the front picking warehouse

-  Rolling racks are handled by picking carts

Front picking of C parts, high bay warehouse:

-  From 2 picking U's for pallets, each equipped with a control panel for quantity confirmation

-  Onto 10 rolling rack storage locations, where pick-to-light shows what needs to be picked and placed there

-  Introduction of transport out of source pallets and rolling racks by PTL

Front picking A parts:

Man-to-goods warehouse:

-  Rolling rack is placed onto retrieval machine

-  Main production rack picking by MDE into the rolling rack in the specified storage location

Additional tasks:

-  Storage of replenishment pallets

-  Removal of empty pallets

-  Return transport of unneeded materials to the high bay warehouse

Automatic storage of "finished" rolling racks into the rolling rack buffer

-  Tower unit picking

-  Supply of picking stations with empty pallets to place under materials

-  Picking of the tower units in the predefined order

-  Transport out of order pallets into the order pallet buffer within the high bay warehouse

-  Supply of the empties magazine with empty pallets

-  Removal of the empties magazine

-  Removal of empty pallets from the picking shelves