The Project
One of the world’s leading luxury brands requested QS Group to design and manufacture a logistics system to feed the factory production lines, to be installed in a new plant in Italy.
QS Group manufactured an automated tray warehouse, for the storage of fabrics and leather, and an automated box warehouse, for the storage of accessories and components. Thanks to the WCS warehouse management software, developed by Esisoftware (a sister company of QS Group), they interact with the existing factory WMS for the correct receipt of incoming materials in the warehouses and the following dispatch to production lines.
The system begins to produce in Autumn 2022.
How does it work
Automated tray warehouse. The coils of leather and fabric vary in size and are manually loaded by an operator on service trays, uniquely identified by barcode labels.
The system consists of 1 double-mast stacker crane and related double-deep racking. The stacker crane is 11 metres high and equipped with a push-pull gripping device, capable of handling one tray at a time. The racking has a maximum storage capacity of 2.750 trays. In addition, with a stacker crane travel speed of 160 m/min, the system is able to perform 30 combined cycles/hour.
The conveyor system for the delivery and return of trays is developed on a single level, on the ground, and is built with motorised rollers and orthogonal chain transfers, with variable speed controlled by inverters.
How does it work
Automated miniload warehouse for boxes. Accessories and components entering the warehouse are identified through manual reading of the reference barcode and are manually loaded by the operator on uniquely barcode-labelled boxes.
The system consists of 2 miniload stacker cranes and related double-deep racking. The stacker cranes are 11 metres high and equipped with a telescopic fork and motorised belts. Each stacker crane is able to handle 2 boxes at a time. The racking has a maximum storage capacity of 20.976 boxes. In addition, with a stacker crane travel speed of 360 m/min, the system is able to perform 200 combined cycles/hour.
The conveyor system is developed on 2 levels (ground and mezzanine) and consists of:
- Entrance bay from in-house departments;
- Entrance area from outside;
- Exit area for loading unit preparation;
- Quality control department area;
- 6 picking bays for preparing the required lists in production, with a put-to-light system to support the operators.
The above-said conveyors are made with motorised rollers and orthogonal belt transfers. They have variable speed controlled by inverters and are able to transfer 120 boxes/hour.
In order to further optimise performance, the system carries out an automatic reordering of materials during idle periods, bringing those belonging to the next production lists closer to the exit bays.
QS Group’s miniload stacker cranes are equipped with energy recovery systems, with the aim of minimising energy consumption and using the energy produced by the magnetic brakes to stop the stacker cranes even in the event of a sudden power failure.
Warehouse management and supervision software
The warehouse management system WMS of Esisoftware interfaces with the factory WMS to manage the incoming materials and the processing of production plans. Other basic functions are warehouse map, operator interfaces and additional functions such as inventory data, statistics, reports, plant synoptic, alarm status.
Do not hesitate to contact us for any further information, please write a message to: info@qs-group.com