The storage of steel coils is difficult to manage in many steel service centers because coils not only have large weights and varying dimensions, but also require frequent relocations to supply manufacturing on schedule. Schütz GmbH & Co. KGaA at the Siershahn site addressed precisely this challenge, where the coil warehouse was brought to the latest state of the art in mid-2019 as part of a capacity increase and new construction. ABF realized the project in close collaboration with the crane supplier Ing. Fritz Voith GmbH and equipped the new building with a fully automated crane storage system.
Initial Situation
Steel coils frequently cause high relocation effort in warehouse operations because the inventory is physically present, but without intelligent storage logic cannot be provided in the correct sequence and without additional movements. Additionally, varying outer diameters and weights complicate stacking, whereby a conventional storage strategy without consideration of coil properties quickly leads to risks in safety, quality, and storage density.
Goals and Challenges
The objective was warehouse management that enables fully automatic, error-free, and damage-free storage as well as autonomous relocations while simultaneously ensuring precise supply to manufacturing facilities. Particularly demanding is the three-tier stacking, because in addition to material data, planned retrievals as well as physical restrictions must be considered. At Siershahn, coils with high weights up to 35 tons and outer diameters between 1.0 and 2.5 meters are additionally present, whereby “simple” stacking without intelligent rules is practically not feasible.
ABF's Solution: Fully Automated Coil Crane Storage with OneBase®MFT and Integrated Coil Carriages
To enable safe and intelligent storage, ABF implemented a fully automated crane storage system with the IoT solution OneBase® MFT. The coil warehouse offers space for approximately 1,000 coils in various dimensions on nearly 3,000 m² and is operated fully automatically with a 30-ton magnetic crane. Inbound and outbound flow was automated through integrated coil carriages, so that storage from customer deliveries, retrievals or return storage from manufacturing, as well as retrievals to goods issue proceed without manual intervention.
A key component is situation-adaptive storage location determination. OneBase®MFT calculates the optimal storage location for each coil to be stored and transfers the appropriate transport order for automatic execution to the crane. Selection is made from customer-specifically configured storage locations on the ground level and virtually generated storage locations on the upper levels, which makes three-tier stacking safe and simultaneously capacity-optimal. During storage and relocation, coil data such as stacking prohibitions for certain material types or the permissible stacking angle flow into the decision to avoid damage from rolling, deformation, or incorrect load distribution while still achieving high storage density.
Additionally, the entire safety concept including multiple protection zones was implemented. All system states, transport orders, and material inventory can be tracked via OneBase®MFT at the control station, on mobile devices, or in the office, with a 3D view providing clarity and ease of operation.
Result and Benefits
Through the integration of five coil carriages, in addition to fully automated storage, the inbound and outbound flow of the warehouse is also automated, whereby manual intervention is no longer necessary in regular operation. The manufacturing lines can trigger replenishment themselves via OneBase®MFT and independently request the next coil to be processed, which stabilizes the supply to the facilities and specifically reduces relocations to a minimum. Simultaneously, continuous material tracking improves transparency of internal transport logistics and reduces the time-consuming search for the appropriate coil, while optimized crane travel paths and automatic warehouse movements measurably increase productivity in coil handling.
