Upgraded software simplifies highly automated warehouse

Kaeser Compressors is a leading compressor manufacturer and supplier of compressed air systems. Its global distribution center in Coburg, Germany, supplies products and spare parts to locations in Europe as well as its U.S. distribution center. A massive increase in demands on the supply chain was causing problems with the connection of the numerous controls. After upgrading its software, the company has simplified the control of subordinate systems by directly connecting them to the warehouse management and material flow systems.

“Direct dispatch has become more and more common and important in our distribution during the past decade,” says Falko Lameter, Kaeser’s chief information officer. “This is also due to the greater variety of products as we are no longer a classical mass producer with pre-manufactured products in stock. Rather, we assemble and dispatch a large number of our products in the configuration requested by the customer.”

The company’s SAP warehouse management system connects the automated high-bay warehouse, 19 carousel lifts, a mini-load system, automatic guided vehicle system, conveyor system, six packing stations for small parts, 11 pallet packing stations, and a buffer warehouse section for faster loading of up to 100 trucks daily. According to Rainer Kemmelmeier, applications manager of logistics at Kaeser, the demands required much faster communication.

“Due to the huge volume of messages we’re exchanging here, we were increasingly having trouble processing them in the system in good time,” he says. “Therefore, we had to reduce the number of reporting points on the container conveyor system, for example.”

By partnering with an integrator, (viastore, us.viastore.com) the company migrated to the modern SAP extended warehouse management and SAP HANA (high-performance analytic appliance) and has increased the DC’s efficiency many times over in every functional area. Goods received are now processed up to 20% faster, Kaeser has recorded a 40% increase in picks, the packaging process has become 50% faster, and the warehouse activities and reporting are executed 20 times faster than in the past.

The system now features customized screen dialogs for operators at picking and packing stations.

Shortly after the new DC system went live, leadership decided to migrate the company’s entire corporate platform to SAP HANA. “So, just after having successfully carried out an open heart surgery so to speak, we had to launch the next project,” Lameter says.