Siemens Logistics and Assembly Systems (L&A) received an order from Almarai Co. Ltd., with headquarters in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, to construct a pallet warehouse with a controlled temperature of 15 degrees Celsius. As general contractor, L&A are responsible for delivery, installation and start-up. The fully automated and integrated high-bay warehouse is scheduled for commissioning in April already.
The plans of Almarai Co. Ltd. to erect a new plant at its existing location in Al Kharj, some 130 kilometers south-east of Riyadh, provided the starting point for the construction of the high-bay warehouse. In future, this production center, known as CPP2 (Central Processing Plant 2), will produce juices, milk- and cheese products. The new high-bay warehouse will complement an already existing warehouse.
In fulfilling this order, Siemens L&A are not only organizing and executing the project, and integrating the new high-bay warehouse into the existing distribution center, but also constructing an extensive pallet conveyor system which will link the goods receiving, the automated high-bay warehouse, and the dispatch and picking areas with one another. Five S/R machines with state of the art PC control will store and retrieve products with high reliability, and provision has also been made for double-depth storage in the five warehouse aisles.
All automatic transport movements will be controlled and coordinated by the material flow computer (MFC) in order to achieve an optimum material flow. The higher-level Warehouse Management System (WMS) also has a certified LES interface (Logistics Execution System) to SAP through which all the processes in the CPP2 will be controlled. The SAP WM module will pass the orders to the decentralized LES configured by Siemens L&A, which will process the orders further as required, and communicate with the material flow computer in order to initiate stock movements in the high-bay warehouse. A special IT function has had to be created, as some of the goods will be identified manually with RF pistols (Radio Frequency) and some fully automatically.
The pallet warehouse is 22 meters high and has a total of some 15,600 storage spaces and can cope with three pallet heights and a maximum weight of 1000 kilograms. The facility will work round the clock, six days a week. Storage and retrieval will run in two twelve hour shifts, and up to120 pallets can be stored each hour. Dispatch can deal with 80 pallets per hour. The Almarai dairy company, with headquarters in Riyadh, is scheduling to start up the entire new complex during the course of this year.
