实例探究 > Growing manufacturing levels turns Beef Products Inc. to automation

Growing manufacturing levels turns Beef Products Inc. to automation

公司规模
Large Corporate
地区
  • America
国家
  • United States
产品
  • Westfalia AS/RS
  • Westfalia WMS
  • Westfalia Satellite® rack entry vehicle
技术栈
  • Automated Storage and Retrieval System (AS/RS)
  • Warehouse Management System (WMS)
  • Barcode Scanning
实施规模
  • Enterprise-wide Deployment
影响指标
  • Cost Savings
  • Productivity Improvements
  • Customer Satisfaction
技术
  • 功能应用 - 仓库管理系统 (WMS)
  • 自动化与控制 - 自动化与过程控制系统
  • 功能应用 - 远程监控系统
适用行业
  • 食品与饮料
  • 消费品
适用功能
  • 仓库和库存管理
  • 质量保证
用例
  • 库存管理
  • 仓库自动化
  • 预测性维护
  • 过程控制与优化
服务
  • 系统集成
  • 软件设计与工程服务
关于客户
Beef Products, Inc. (BPI) is the world’s leading manufacturer of boneless lean beef, headquartered in Dakota Dunes, South Dakota. BPI is renowned for its high standards in food safety and quality, producing nearly 1,000,000 lbs of beef per day. The company operates a continuous manufacturing process that requires stringent quality control measures to ensure the safety and quality of its products. BPI's operations are extensive, necessitating advanced storage and logistics solutions to manage the large volumes of beef produced daily. The company sought to enhance its material handling and inventory control processes through automation to maintain its high standards and improve operational efficiency.
挑战
Food safety is a critical priority at Beef Products, Inc. (BPI) and with manufacturing approaching 1,000,000 lbs per day, it was essential for BPI to automate the material handling and inventory control process. Through automation BPI would achieve maximum storage and optimize their warehouse logistics. BPI required the use of an area adjacent to the meat processing plant to store products and process orders. BPI needed storage capacity in excess of 20 million lbs of beef. In addition, the available land for the freezer was 400’ away from manufacturing with a railroad truck separating the building lots. BPI’s continuous manufacturing operation produces boxed beef, and while the product type is identified by a bar code label on each individual case, the product grade is not determined until the results of quality control testing are known. As a result, BPI needed a way to apply readable bar codes after production, on finished-palletized loads to allow scanning and identification within the new automated warehouse and at their customer’s dock. In addition, their food safety program prohibits shipment of all products until quality assurance testing results are proven. BPI needed the ability to quarantine all products and then to provide automatic release of palletized products as ready-to-ship inventory.
解决方案
To garner the greatest amount of storage, run the most efficient logistics system, and provide cost savings, a high-density AS/RS was developed. Westfalia designed the conveying system to include approximately 18 pallets of accumulation between the palletizer and the print-and-apply station in order to allow enough time to gather additional information regarding product grade prior to the labeling system. The pallet loads are then automatically conveyed into the freezer, where they arrive at a turntable and are directed to one of two Storage Retrieval Machines (SRMs) for storage. The AS/RS is designed with two SRMs in one aisle, thereby providing redundancy - should one SRM require maintenance, the other can still service the aisle. The 15-level high freezer storage system has 10-deep storage lanes on both sides of the aisle. Westfalia’s patented Satellite® rack entry vehicle and triple pallet support rack system provide fast 110 pallets/hour throughput rates with safer pallet handling. The innovative high-density storage design furnishes 11,886 pallet positions in a 20,235 square foot freezer.
运营影响
  • Westfalia’s Warehouse Management System (WMS) controls and tracks all product flows throughout the warehouse. As part of the food safety checks, pallets directed to one of the SRMs are stored in quarantine until lab tests are completed. When BPI’s computer communicates the results of the lab tests, a grade is assigned to each pallet and the WMS releases the pallet as ready-to-ship product. When lab tests provide a different result than what is expected, the product grade is changed, and the WMS instructs the SRM to re-warehouse the pallet to a group with the same product grade.
  • Westfalia’s WMS automatically exchanges information with BPI’s host computer to create product orders. Via the WMS, customer orders are automatically retrieved and conveyed to one of four truck-staging lanes within the freezer. Truck-staging lanes within the freezer high rise provide BPI the benefits of processing orders in advance, staging products at the proper temperature, and freeing valuable dock space.
  • Westfalia’s design maximizes efficiency of the shipping operation and the storage area, while freeing up valuable dock space. BPI has seen significant labor savings since installing the automated system, as there is no human contact with their products until they reach the shipping dock. Plus, the WMS more accurately tracks inventory and controls product quality from production to the dock.
数量效益
  • 11,866 pallet positions
  • 15-level high freezer warehouse
  • 207’ long x 92’ wide x 101’ high
  • 850 linear feet of conveyors
  • 110 pallets/hour throughput rates

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