Buttinette Textil-Versandhaus GmbH, based in the Bavarian-Swabian town of Wertingen near Augsburg, is currently constructing a new logistics center for the shipment of items in the creative and carnival sectors. After a comprehensive tendering process, the catalog and e-commerce company for craft and sewing items as well as carnival supplies commissioned system integrator Element Logic to plan and implement efficient plant automation for its new logistics center, according to a statement from the system integrator on July 4.
The shipping center will be completed in the Wertingen industrial and commercial area of Geratshofen. On an area of 33,000 square meters, a modern logistics center is being built there with investments in the multi-million euro
range. Around 20,000 items in the creative and 8,000 items in the carnival sector will be stored there for distribution through the catalog and online channels, as well as for supplying branches in Austria, Switzerland, and France.
The order to Element Logic for securing coordinated, automated, and reliable processes of storage and order processing includes the intralogistic equipment of the logistics center, excluding forklifts and some manual shelves. Additionally, for process control and warehouse management, the Warehouse Management System "SuPCIS-L8" from Element Logic's subsidiary S&P was implemented.
The core of the intralogistics in the new logistics center of the family company founded in 1979 is a large "AutoStore" facility. The storage cube, the so-called
"Grid," offers space for 135,000 containers with side heights of 425 millimeters. On the surface of the Grid, 325 "R5+" robots provide quick storage, rearrangement, and retrieval of the containers and their presentation at 40 integrated picking stations. These so-called "Ports" are set up under the "Autostore" facility and are directly connected to the conveyor technology. From there, items are picked from the supplied source containers into shipping boxes. Additionally, 17 "ConveyorPorts" are integrated into the cube. With them, the "AutoStore" robots hand over the system containers for further transportation to other connected workstations directly onto the conveyor technology.
As hardware components, Element Logic installs a conveyor system together with a system partner. The
system control is handled by the eController and the automation control "PLC" from Element Logic. The conveyor technology connects the individual workstations between automatic carton erecting, picking in the Autostore, manual packing areas, carton sealers, and goods departure. Integrated alongside scanners and labelers are five folding box erectors and five sealing machines, two of which include volume reduction.
The WMS "SuPCIS-L8" from S&P links the "AutoStore" via a standard interface and takes over inventory management, material flow, and process control. The software requests the items based on orders and sequences them from the container storage, controlling the dialogues of the connected workstations. This allows the plant performance to be further increased through prioritization strategies.
