Industry:
Automotive suppliers, filtration and plastics technology
Key Technologies:
SAP ERP, FlexGuide transport and forklift control system, STILL OptiSpeed interface
Areas of Application:
Order picking, shipping logistics, outbound goods, high-bay warehouses
Key Features:
Central SAP integration for paperless transport orders, parallel picking of multiple delivery notes, automatic order assignment, progress visualization, semi-automatic forklift control via OptiSpeed, label printing directly at the shelf
Material Guidance System optimizes SAP shipment
MANN+HUMMEL has installed the order picking and shipment processes with the Flexus Material Guidance System FLX-TLS, which is directly integrated into SAP, and significantly improved the utilization of resources.
One million transport orders in six months: The forklift fleet at Mann+Hummel in Marklkofen, Lower Bavaria, has its hands full. Six narrow-aisle forklifts and four reach trucks from Still handle the entire material flow between incoming and outgoing goods here in three shifts. Every day, around 2,500 pallets leave the plant, which corresponds to a volume of 70 truckloads. The volume had been increasing year after year, so that by 2014, the shipping team had reached its limits. “In the medium term, we would have had to hire four more employees to be prepared for the future,” recalls Roland Prechler, who is responsible for Supply Chain Management (SCM) at the Marklkofen site.
MANN+HUMMEL is a leading global expert in filtration solutions, as well as a development partner and series supplier to the international automotive and mechanical engineering industries. In 2014, 16,000 employees at more than 60 locations worldwide generated revenue of approximately 2.8 billion euros. The Group’s product portfolio includes, among other things, air filtration systems, intake systems, liquid filtration systems, cabin air filters, and technical plastic components for the automotive industry, as well as filter elements for automotive maintenance. For mechanical engineering, process engineering, and industrial applications, the product portfolio includes industrial filters, membrane filters for water filtration, and filtration systems.
“We were impressed by the fact that Flexus AG has many years of
Roland Prechler
experience in SAP® intralogistics and offers an established yet innovative solution in the form of the FlexGuide transport management system.”
Head of SCM
MANN+HUMMEL GmbH
Long ways, many empty runs
As an alternative to hiring new staff, MANN+HUMMEL opted for a sustainable increase in efficiency in the shipping area. The starting point was the delivery-slip-based storage and retrieval, as well as the pre-picking process for the high-rack forklifts. Employees would retrieve the delivery slips individually from the nearby shipping office. “This process resulted in long distances and many empty trips,” reports Ilona Hudson, who drives key logistics projects at MANN+HUMMEL. Overall, “loading the trucks” under the old system often took “too long.”
Time-consuming rack aisle changes posed a fur ther disadvantage of the previous procedure. On top of this, several narrow-aisle forklifts with different delivery notes had to travel to a certain aisle at the same time, which resulted in long waiting times.
Maximum transparency
Against this backdrop, MANN+HUMMEL sought a transport management system that could be centrally integrated into SAP®. The goal was to distribute transport orders paperlessly to all forklifts via a central pool, while also being able to work across delivery notes. In November 2014, Roland Prechler’s team began conducting current state and value stream analyses and evaluated potential optimization opportunities. When selecting a suitable supplier, the choice fell on Flexus AG and its FlexGuide transport and forklift control system. “We were impressed by the fact that Flexus has many years of experience in SAP® intralogistics and offers an established yet innovative solution with its transport control system,” said Prechler.
Despite numerous requests for changes and enhancements from MANN+HUMMEL, the system was implemented in just five months, allowing the new processes to go live on March 31, 2015.
Among the additional features requested were, for example, a visualization of the current progress of each order and a limit on the number of delivery slips that can be processed simultaneously. In addition, it is now possible to view the delivery orders processed each day by the team and by each individual employee. “This boosts motivation, ensures maximum transparency across all orders, and helps track progress,” explains Hudson.
Central optimization
Because the transport orders are organized in multiple stages, the 32 forklift operators have a clear division of labor. The narrow-aisle forklifts in the high-bay warehouse handle storage, retrieval, and pre-picking, with the transport control system minimizing aisle changes whenever possible. The same applies to two narrow-aisle forklifts simultaneously accessing the same rack aisle—a situation that is now a thing of the past. The handoff point for the pallets is a designated area in front of the high-bay rack—the so-called loading area. There, the load carriers are taken over by the front-loading forklifts, which are responsible for loading, unloading, and pre-loading the trucks.
Parallel picking
With the FlexGuide transport management system, the next transport orders—assigned according to optimization logic—are automatically allocated and displayed on the forklift terminal’s screen. The most urgent delivery slips are processed with the highest priority, and each delivery slip can now be picked by multiple forklifts simultaneously. In addition, putaways are combined with pick-and-place operations. “This now allows for dual operations, and we’ve minimized travel distances,” Prechler emphasizes.
Shorter lead times
Thus, after one year of using the solution by Flexus the results are impressive: since its implementation, lead times have been reduced by 7 percent and paths by around 15 percent. “In the past, a narrow-aisle forklift was only able to handle 25 storage and removal operations per hour, but now it is 29,” confirms Hudson. Due to better capacity utilization, the overall performance has been increased noticeably using the same number of employees and vehicles.
Interface STILL Optispeed
“Flexus AG is an outstanding and reliable service partner for optimizing our SAP® processes,” says Prechler. “That’s why we’ve already scheduled their experts for various follow-up projects.” Speaking of which: MANN+HUMMEL expects to achieve further efficiency gains through the semi-automatic control system for its narrow-aisle forklifts, which was introduced in March 2016. These forklifts are factory-equipped with the OptiSpeed semi-automatic system, which has been integrated directly into the control system via an interface developed by Flexus. As a result, the forklifts now navigate automatically or semi-automatically to the target storage location, with the driving path within the rack optimized both longitudinally and vertically. In addition, this reduces the workload on employees, who no longer need to focus on navigating to the storage location. Another advantage of this enhancement is the prevention of incorrect picks and putaways.
Fingertip printing
But there is more: The new Material Guidance System has not only increased the speed of work significantly but also the quality. This is because, unlike in the past, the outgoing goods pallets can now be labelled directly by the forklift driver when they are removed from storage. For this purpose, a printer was placed in each rack aisle, which can be controlled from the forklift terminal. After picking up the pallet from the high-rack warehouse, a fingertip on the touch screen is all it takes. When the pallet leaves the aisle, the label already waits in the printer and is applied immediately. Until March 2015, retrieval and labeling were still separate, leading to some mix-ups.
In conclusion
Flexus’s FlexGuide transport and forklift guidance system has significantly improved the outbound shipping processes at MANN+HUMMEL on various levels. It’s no wonder that the company plans to roll out the solution at other locations as well.
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Sascha Scherer
FlexGuide4 for worry-free intralogistics
phone: +49 931 466 211 100