David Maloney has been a journalist for more than 35 years and is currently the group editorial director for DC Velocity and Supply Chain Quarterly magazines. In this role, he is responsible for the editorial content of both brands of Agile Business Media. Dave joined DC Velocity in April of 2004. Prior to that, he was a senior editor for Modern Materials Handling magazine. Dave also has extensive experience as a broadcast journalist. Before writing for supply chain publications, he was a journalist, television producer and director in Pittsburgh. Dave combines a background of reporting on logistics with his video production experience to bring new opportunities to DC Velocity readers, including web videos highlighting top distribution and logistics facilities, webcasts and other cross-media projects. He continues to live and work in the Pittsburgh area.
Every carpenter knows that the work isn't done until the finishing touches have been added. For 25,000 carpenters and cabinetmakers throughout Europe, that often includes adding edgings along with knobs, handles, hooks, and other hardware from Rudolph Ostermann GmbH.
What are edgings? They're the finishing strips that go on the end of a cabinet or countertop. Once a carpenter cuts a piece of material to size, there remains a rough unfinished edge. An edging piece is then glued on to provide a professional finish. Ostermann is the largest supplier of edgings in Europe, and edging accounts for 70 percent of its annual sales.
Ostermann distributes these products from a facility located in Bocholt, in the northern Rhine region of Germany near the border with the Netherlands. The 11,000-square-meter (118,403-square-foot) facility handles around 3,000 orders daily, consisting of about 5,000 order lines. The distribution center also ships to carpenters, furniture stores, and office supply stores throughout Europe and to select customers in other countries, including the United States. Orders received by 4 p.m. ship the same day, with next-day delivery throughout Germany and nearby nations.
In order to keep up with demand and improve its product handling, the family-owned company erected a high-bay building outfitted with an automated storage and retrieval system (AS/RS) in 2012. The facility was designed by SSI Schaefer, which also served as the systems integrator. The project included the material flow design, construction of a rack-supported high-bay building, the installation of the automated storage system and connecting conveyors, and seamless integration with the warehouse management system. The automated system now helps Ostermann organize its stock and keep pace with growth.
"We considered just building a warehouse with racks in it, but we realized that it would be slow to process orders," says Christof Wauters, logistics and material manager for Ostermann. "A manual warehouse would have reduced the performance of the picker. That is why we chose automation. The system also takes up less space in the building and reduces errors," he says.
The AS/RS is used to house products that replenish picking areas. Hardware and other decorative products are stored in the automated system, along with 1,500 different edging products (the edgings come in wood tones and just about every color of the rainbow, as well as in a variety of widths). The variety results in more than 7,000 different SKUs (stock-keeping units).
Suppliers deliver the edgings in large rolls that lie flat on pallets. These pallets are placed onto conveyors that feed the AS/RS. The system offers 10,000 storage locations for pallets arrayed along its two aisles, both of which are 120 meters (394 feet) long. Each aisle has a crane to pick up pallets for storage and retrieve them when needed for replenishment. The rack measures 24 meters (78 feet) high, and the system provides some 45,000 cubic meters (more than 1.5 million cubic feet) of automated storage space.
At the time the automated system was installed, Ostermann was already using an SAP warehouse management system to direct distribution operations. Once the high-bay warehouse was built, the company added the SAP Task and Resource Management application to control the automated functions. Ostermann reports that the integration of the two SAP systems was seamless, with no additional IT changes needed. The SAP software now manages the entire automated processes, including the placement of pallets into storage positions.
CUTTING EDGE
Today, about 75 percent of the facility's total products pass through the high-bay AS/RS. The process starts at the building's docks, where pallets of inbound materials are offloaded from trucks. After the pallets are labeled, they're placed onto conveyors by lift trucks. The conveyors automatically carry the pallets to the AS/RS.
Throughout the day, the AS/RS replenishes static racks that hold products for picking. The management software directs the cranes to retrieve pallets and deposit them onto conveyors. Lift trucks gather the pallets from the conveyors and transport them to the static racks. The racking is five to nine levels high, depending on whether the section is pallet racking or rack shelving. There are a total of 12,000 storage positions in the static area.
Associates use paper lists to pick products from the racks using order picker trucks. From five to 10 orders are batch picked at a time onto a pallet and then separated into individual orders later. The SAP software determines the optimal pick path to minimize travel and labor for the order pickers.
Because many customers don't want to buy a full roll of edging, Ostermann will cut pieces to size for specific orders. If this service is needed, the rolls are picked and taken by lift truck to cutting stations, where the amount required for an order is measured from the roll, cut, and placed onto shipping pallets using a robotic palletizer and an automatic stretch-wrapping machine. Most orders ship by parcel carrier.
Another section of the building is outfitted with powered cantilever racks. Longer strips of products measuring up to six meters (about 20 feet) are placed onto the racks for storage and direct picking. Motors and wheels on the rack sections allow them to glide tightly together to provide dense storage or roll apart to create an access aisle.
SOLD ON AUTOMATION
As for how the new system is working out, since moving to the SSI Schaefer automated system, Ostermann has been able to handle increased volumes in a smaller footprint. It has also optimized its processes, which has led to better labor utilization and improved real-time inventory tracking.
"If we had not added the high-bay automated system, we also would have had to hire more personnel. Plus we gained accuracy," notes Wauters. "It was our first automated system, and now we are looking at installing a goods-to-person system for picking."
Supply chain planning (SCP) leaders working on transformation efforts are focused on two major high-impact technology trends, including composite AI and supply chain data governance, according to a study from Gartner, Inc.
"SCP leaders are in the process of developing transformation roadmaps that will prioritize delivering on advanced decision intelligence and automated decision making," Eva Dawkins, Director Analyst in Gartner’s Supply Chain practice, said in a release. "Composite AI, which is the combined application of different AI techniques to improve learning efficiency, will drive the optimization and automation of many planning activities at scale, while supply chain data governance is the foundational key for digital transformation.”
Their pursuit of those roadmaps is often complicated by frequent disruptions and the rapid pace of technological innovation. But Gartner says those leaders can accelerate the realized value of technology investments by facilitating a shift from IT-led to business-led digital leadership, with SCP leaders taking ownership of multidisciplinary teams to advance business operations, channels and products.
“A sound data governance strategy supports advanced technologies, such as composite AI, while also facilitating collaboration throughout the supply chain technology ecosystem,” said Dawkins. “Without attention to data governance, SCP leaders will likely struggle to achieve their expected ROI on key technology investments.”
The British logistics robot vendor Dexory this week said it has raised $80 million in venture funding to support an expansion of its artificial intelligence (AI) powered features, grow its global team, and accelerate the deployment of its autonomous robots.
A “significant focus” continues to be on expanding across the U.S. market, where Dexory is live with customers in seven states and last month opened a U.S. headquarters in Nashville. The Series B will also enhance development and production facilities at its UK headquarters, the firm said.
The “series B” funding round was led by DTCP, with participation from Latitude Ventures, Wave-X and Bootstrap Europe, along with existing investors Atomico, Lakestar, Capnamic, and several angels from the logistics industry. With the close of the round, Dexory has now raised $120 million over the past three years.
Dexory says its product, DexoryView, provides real-time visibility across warehouses of any size through its autonomous mobile robots and AI. The rolling bots use sensor and image data and continuous data collection to perform rapid warehouse scans and create digital twins of warehouse spaces, allowing for optimized performance and future scenario simulations.
Originally announced in September, the move will allow Deutsche Bahn to “fully focus on restructuring the rail infrastructure in Germany and providing climate-friendly passenger and freight transport operations in Germany and Europe,” Werner Gatzer, Chairman of the DB Supervisory Board, said in a release.
For its purchase price, DSV gains an organization with around 72,700 employees at over 1,850 locations. The new owner says it plans to investment around one billion euros in coming years to promote additional growth in German operations. Together, DSV and Schenker will have a combined workforce of approximately 147,000 employees in more than 90 countries, earning pro forma revenue of approximately $43.3 billion (based on 2023 numbers), DSV said.
After removing that unit, Deutsche Bahn retains its core business called the “Systemverbund Bahn,” which includes passenger transport activities in Germany, rail freight activities, operational service units, and railroad infrastructure companies. The DB Group, headquartered in Berlin, employs around 340,000 people.
“We have set clear goals to structurally modernize Deutsche Bahn in the areas of infrastructure, operations and profitability and focus on the core business. The proceeds from the sale will significantly reduce DB’s debt and thus make an important contribution to the financial stability of the DB Group. At the same time, DB Schenker will gain a strong strategic owner in DSV,” Deutsche Bahn CEO Richard Lutz said in a release.
Transportation industry veteran Anne Reinke will become president & CEO of trade group the Intermodal Association of North America (IANA) at the end of the year, stepping into the position from her previous post leading third party logistics (3PL) trade group the Transportation Intermediaries Association (TIA), both organizations said today.
Meanwhile, TIA today announced that insider Christopher Burroughs would fill Reinke’s shoes as president & CEO. Burroughs has been with TIA for 13 years, most recently as its vice president of Government Affairs for the past six years, during which time he oversaw all legislative and regulatory efforts before Congress and the federal agencies.
Before her four years leading TIA, Reinke spent two years as Deputy Assistant Secretary with the U.S. Department of Transportation and 16 years with CSX Corporation.
Serious inland flooding and widespread power outages are likely to sweep across Florida and other Southeast states in coming days with the arrival of Hurricane Helene, which is now predicted to make landfall Thursday evening along Florida’s northwest coast as a major hurricane, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
While the most catastrophic landfall impact is expected in the sparsely-population Big Bend area of Florida, it’s not only sea-front cities that are at risk. Since Helene is an “unusually large storm,” its flooding, rainfall, and high winds won’t be limited only to the Gulf Coast, but are expected to travel hundreds of miles inland, the weather service said. Heavy rainfall is expected to begin in the region even before the storm comes ashore, and the wet conditions will continue to move northward into the southern Appalachians region through Friday, dumping storm total rainfall amounts of up to 18 inches. Specifically, the major flood risk includes the urban areas around Tallahassee, metro Atlanta, and western North Carolina.
In addition to its human toll, the storm could exert serious business impacts, according to the supply chain mapping and monitoring firm Resilinc. Those will be largely triggered by significant flooding, which could halt oil operations, force mandatory evacuations, restrict ports, and disrupt air traffic.
While the storm’s track is currently forecast to miss the critical ports of Miami and New Orleans, it could still hurt operations throughout the Southeast agricultural belt, which produces products like soybeans, cotton, peanuts, corn, and tobacco, according to Everstream Analytics.
That widespread footprint could also hinder supply chain and logistics flows along stretches of interstate highways I-10 and I-75 and on regional rail lines operated by Norfolk Southern and CSX. And Hurricane Helene could also likely impact business operations by unleashing power outages, deep flooding, and wind damage in northern Florida portions of Georgia, Everstream Analytics said.
Before the storm had even touched Florida soil, recovery efforts were already being launched by humanitarian aid group the American Logistics Aid Network (ALAN). In a statement on Wednesday, the group said it is urging residents in the storm's path across the Southeast to heed evacuation notices and safety advisories, and reminding members of the logistics community that their post-storm help could be needed soon. The group will continue to update its Disaster Micro-Site with Hurricane Helene resources and with requests for donated logistics assistance, most of which will start arriving within 24 to 72 hours after the storm’s initial landfall, ALAN said.