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“This is one of the most modern
warehouse facilities in the whole of
Sweden for handling full pallets,”
asserts Dag Sjökvist, Technology
Manager of Attends AB at the Aneby
production site in the heart of the
southern Swedish province of Småland.
A huge company logo, shining some
30m up on the northern side of the
new high-bay warehouse can be
seen from afar; a sign that things are
changing for this province formerly
best known for the children’s books
of Astrid Lindgren. Aneby is the base
for Attends, a traditional company
that since 2012 has been part of the
North American Domtar Personal Care
Group and which is one of the leading
global manufacturers and suppliers of
medical healthcare products, babies’
nappies and incontinence products
for adults. One of two production sites
in Europe, it is the centre for research
and development, product distribution,
purchasing, information technology
and customer service functions of a
manufacturer whose local subsidiaries
and sales partners give it a presence in
more than 20 countries in Europe, and
the Middle East.
“The continuous growth in demand
for our products meant that we had
to expand,” says Sjökvist. So two new
In Rude Health
production lines were added to the
eight existing lines in the 42,000m
2
production facility. “Neither the storage
capacities nor the logistics processes
were designed for this change,”
he says. “So with this in mind, we
decided, for the first time in the history
of the company, to implement a fully
automated logistics solution.” Following
an international tendering process, the
contract for the project was awarded
to the intralogistics specialists SSI
Schaefer, Giebelstadt.
As the general contractor, SSI Schaefer
created the logistics concept, planned
everything in detail and undertook
the turn-key creation of a five-aisle
high-bay warehouse (HBW) with
19,100 storage locations as well
as the connection to production. It
used its WAMAS® logistics software
to implement the IT-basis for stock
management, process management,
a material flow system and warehouse
visualisation. “It is an efficient logistics
solution from a single source, which
lets us move the full pallets from
production to storage and order
picking to loading, totally automatically,
without having to touch them,”
summarises Sjökvist. “This consistently
automates all the processes, from
stock recording and storage of the
raw materials, to shipping the finished
products.”
“In view of the tight time window
allowed for implementation and the fact
that we were setting up the installation
in the depths of a Swedish winter, this
was a challenging project, demanding
a high level of commitment from all
those involved,” explains Anders Bohlin,
Sales Manager for SSI Schaefer North
& East Europe. Just 15 months after the
contract was awarded, the installation
was handed over on time, at the start
Logistics
Business
finds out how an intralogistics specialist has almost
doubled throughput for a Swedish healthcare product manufacturer.
Johan Törnqvist (left) Logistics Engineer
and Dag Sjökvist, Technology Manager at Attends in Aneby
50
Logistics Business Magazine | February 2016
WAREHOUSE TECHNOLOGY AND SYSTEMS