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Tag: warehouse

Geodis building sustainable facility in The Netherlands

Posted on by Keith McKinley

Global supply chain operator Geodis is acquiring 21.5ha of land at Trade Port Noord from Greenport Venlo. It plans to build one of the most sustainable logistics facilities in the Netherlands: a 130,000 sq m contract logistics site servicing customers from various vertical sectors and designed to accommodate the current growth in e-commerce.

The Venlo region is one of Europe’s prime spots for logistics activities, located near the Dutch border with Germany, acting as a link between the nearby air and seaports of Amsterdam, Rotterdam and Antwerp with the major industrial markets of the continent.

“Trade Port Noord has excellent connections to the European multimodal infrastructure via road, river, rail, ocean and air. This makes it the ideal location for Geodis to operate cargo flows for international clients, and to manage their warehousing and logistics needs utilizing our European distribution network – and to expand our Benelux-Germany-Poland corridor at the same time,” says Marie-Christine Lombard, CEO of Geodis.

The construction of the new facility will start in 2022. Geodis is committed to protect the environment and ensure the well-being of its employees. This new build will be designed to standards aimed at a BREEAM “outstanding” certification, and a WELL Silver certification. BREEAM is a world-known sustainability assessment method for buildings; WELL is an international standard for creating spaces that enhance human health and well-being.

“Health and safety of our employees have always been our first priority – already before the COVID 19 pandemic, and still today,” says Marie-Christine Lombard. “In the same spirit, the Geodis logistics campus in Venlo will be one of the very few logistics buildings in the world with a WELL certification.”

To ensure all standards for the desired certifications will be in place, Geodis has involved real estate services and investment company CBRE, advising on the land acquisition and project management.

“The new Geodis campus is not only impressive in size, but it is also ambitious. To achieve the highest possible BREEAM-rating, we will pay attention to every detail in both design and material use, as well as design various energy saving systems,” says Tim Habraken, Sustainability Director at CBRE.

Tenancy tips for logistics businesses

Posted on by Keith McKinley

With Covid highlighting how the logistics sector can change very swiftly, it’s vital for tenants to avoid unnecessary and unwelcome disruptions. Bill Dunmore, a partner in Brecher LLP’s Real Estate team, offers some tips on what to look for and what to avoid when signing new leases.

As we emerge into the Covid era, the role of logistics seems assured. Changes in consumer and business behaviour are driving occupier demand for logistics property over both the short and long term.

There is currently an understanding, encouraged by the government, that landlords and tenants need to work together, in the spirit of transparency and collaboration – good timing if you are about to take a new lease, or renew an existing one. The following pointers will assist your business to maximise flexibility and minimise risk.

Leasing flexibility

Recent times have highlighted just how hard it is to plan for the future. Many logistics businesses are still waiting to see the longer term effects of Brexit on supply chains, so remain cautious about entering into significant financial obligations. If the term of the lease is too short, you might be faced with the distraction of having to relocate / renegotiate with the landlord just when things are going well. On the other hand, too long and you are tied in to an expensive commitment when times could get tough.

Negotiating maximum flexibility in leases is therefore key. Ask for the right to extend the lease or even take leases of neighbouring vacant units, but also have the ability to break, assign or sublet the lease if needed.

Covid clauses

Tenants were shocked to find they still had to pay rent during lockdown, even if it was illegal for them to trade from the premises. Going forward, some landlords are now voluntarily agreeing rent holiday provisions in new leases where the tenant cannot open under future government instructions. This is a rapidly changing area and concessions secured vary according to landlord, property and bargaining strength of tenant but 50% rent reductions or substitution of turnover rent are considered standard.

Bespoke requirements

To keep up with increased customer demands and technical innovation, the property may need altering. Structural alterations will be prohibited, but consider if you are going to need a mezzanine floor or loading bays and carve this out to avoid being held to ransom by the landlord. Internal, non-structural alterations should be permitted but you will still need written consent to comply with the lease. A client recently carried out a warehouse modernisation installing mechanical and electrical infrastructure, high bay pallet racking, automated systems and an upgrade to the electricity supply.

Landlord’s consent was obtained as part of the lease negotiation (planning permission and energy company authorisation were also needed).

Exit strategies

Break options – these permit the tenant to end the lease early on prior written notice (usually six or nine months). Beware – if the notice is not served correctly, the lease will continue with the tenant ‘on the hook’ for several more years’ rent, business rates and service charge. For this reason conditions on the break (e.g. reinstating alterations) should not be agreed because they make it harder to break the lease.

Assignment and Underletting – make sure the lease can be assigned (transferred or sold) to a third party, but beware of the guarantee the outgoing tenant must give of the assignee’s obligations. During the pandemic there has been an increase in former tenants having to pay a defaulting assignee’s rent arrears – a nasty shock. Underletting rights can also afford useful flexibility. We recently helped a tenant sublet part of their external yard to a car dealership for parking, thus gaining rental income from surplus space.

The above list is by no means exhaustive, but highlights some important points for consideration to bolster a tenant’s position in uncertain times.

Nelly achieves storage capacity of 37,000 positions

Posted on by David Priestman

Nelly, a leading online retailer of fashion and beauty products in the Nordic countries, relied on the expertise in industrial storage systems of AR Racking and its distributor and strategic partner Rudells, who have designed and installed a narrow aisle racking solution (VNA racking) adapted to the storage of boxes in a 1,360 sq m area of the new warehouse. With the installation of these racks, a storage capacity of 36,960 positions was achieved. The warehouse is located in Borås (Sweden).

“When Nelly first contacted us, they looked at a solution with high storage with shelves. Given the characteristics of the products and the customer’s needs, we proposed a pallet racking solution, but adapted to the storage of boxes” explains Anders Rudell, Sales Manager of Rudells Lagerinredningar.

After that first phase of technical-logistical analysis and the search for the best solution for the customer, Rudells and AR Racking designed and installed a narrow aisle racking solution with 1200 mm deep sections to pick 600 mm boxes from both sides. In addition, mesh panels were added to the sections to prevent dust on the storage levels and to allow the sprinklers to reach the entire installation.

According to Jimmy Andersson, Regional Area Manager for Scandinavia, EE & South Africa at AR Racking: “The storage system installed is a very versatile solution as it allows adaptation to any type of goods, by weight or volume, by regulating the load levels or adding any of the accessories for special loads.”

Additionally, the narrow aisle racks allow direct and selective access to the stored goods.

CLICK HERE to watch the video.

Linde offers 3D view into the warehouse

Posted on by David Priestman

The Linde Warehouse Navigator helps small- and medium-sized companies to digitally organise their entire warehouse processes.

Consisting of a warehouse management system as well as an order picking and forklift guidance system, the modular solution enables long-term time and cost savings to be achieved and features various special options: A three-dimensional view visualises the warehouse including goods in real time and shows drivers the fastest route to their destination. While doing so, the software automatically documents the movements of the load carriers across different storage locations.

Many small- and medium-sized companies in Germany and other European countries still handle their warehouse processes manually using tables, lists and paper printouts. “In the long run, however, this is neither efficient nor up-to-date and is detrimental to profit and competitiveness,” says Christoph Hock, Product Manager Software Solutions. “Even with fleets of three or four forklifts, it quickly becomes confusing when incoming and outgoing goods processes as well as storage and retrieval operations are organised using paperwork.”

The Linde Warehouse Navigator provides a solution in the form of digital warehouse management. Its range of functions can be adapted to different warehouse scenarios and expanded step by step. The developers placed great importance on providing clear, configurable user interfaces, and ensured that mobile devices can be integrated in the system. Training and go-live support are part of every package solution. The required software licenses can be either purchased or rented via a monthly fee. This also includes the charges for cloud hosting.

Reliable goods tracking

Once installed, the Linde Warehouse Navigator can be used for the paperless control, monitoring and documentation of all orders and inventories as well as goods movements in the warehouse. The basis is the warehouse management system (WMS) which is suited for all warehouse types as well as standard storage and retrieval strategies. “In addition, even the entry-level version offers customers an overview of specific key figures on the basis of which they can further improve their processes,” says Hock.

For Product Manager Hock, the highlight of the software is that it enables 3D visualisation of all storage locations that shows the current occupancy for the entire plant site. Selected items are color-coded so that their position in the warehouse is easy to identify. “This function is particularly helpful for block warehouses,” says Hock. In addition to this is the continuous tracking of load carriers via the optional Real-Time Locating System (RTLS).

In conjunction with the RTLS, the forklift guiding system (FGS) coordinates the routes of the industrial trucks in real time and displays all forklifts and AGVs operating in the warehouse. Transport orders are either generated manually by the employees, for example via the “drag-and-drop” feature in the warehouse visualisation system or via a forklift call system (call button).

Alternatively, orders can also be assigned automatically, for example from the ERP system via an interface or when predefined thresholds are not met. The optimal route to the destination is shown to the drivers via arrows in the 3D view. The source and destination of the transport order are also highlighted in colour.

The third component of the Linde Warehouse Navigator is the order picking system. The system bundles smaller orders with various individual items for parallel picking (multi-order picking). Larger orders can be divided into several partial orders and consolidated afterwards.

Last but not least, the software solution helps harmonise the operational IT landscape and reduces the number of contacts involved. Very narrow aisle trucks and AGVs can be integrated via standard interfaces. “This ensures short commissioning times and reduces costs,” explains Christoph Hock.

Why Human Psychology is Key to Effective Human-robot Interaction 

Posted on by David Priestman

Craig Summers, UK Managing Director of Manhattan Associates, reflects on Manhattan Associates’ annual virtual event, Momentum Connect and its biggest takeaway. This was being treated to an excellent speaker session from Kate Darling, Professor of human-robot interaction, tech policy and ethics at MIT, looking at how people project human traits, qualities and emotions onto not just animals, but also robots too.

The recent news from DHL that the logistics giant plans to deploy an additional 1,000 Locus Robotics (the Massachusetts-based robotic start-up) picking robots to more than twenty locations across the USA and Europe by the end of next year, is only the latest in a long line of news over the last twelve months to underline that robots (particularly in the warehouse and supply chain context) are very much here to stay.

Anthropomorphise

It’s critical that organisations not only look at the technology practicalities of these deployments (such as software, platform and API integration) but also the ‘softer’ elements such as the psychological interactions between human workers and their metallic co-bot colleagues.

If you own a pet, be it anything as small as a goldfish, right up to the size of a dog or even a horse, the chances are, you will have heard of the terms anthropomorphism. Deriving from its verb form anthropomorphise, itself derived from the Greek word ánthrōpos (ἄνθρωπος, lit. human) and morphē (μορφή, form), the term simply means to project human traits, qualities, emotions and behaviours onto non humans. According to Darling, these projections are not exclusive to just our pets, however instead they are tipping over into our increasing interactions with robots too.

Robots as Living Things

According to Darling, humans feel a certain empathy towards robots; even ones as simple as a Roomba vacuum cleaner. “It is not the most sophisticated machine in the world, it just moves around the floor cleaning it. Even so, 80% of people who own one have their own name for it. Furthermore, according to iRobot (the manufacturing company), when these Roombas suffer a breakdown, most people prefer to have their automated vacuum cleaners repaired rather than replaced with a new one.” This shows the illogical, yet very real bond humans will readily form with even the most basic of robots.

Darling went on to explain that even she (a professor in the study of human-robot interaction) has experienced feelings for basic robots in the past. In 2007 she bought a toy robot dinosaur; “because it had motors, touch sensors and an infrared camera. I thought it was really interesting because it  reproduced certain behaviours very well. When I showed it to my friends, some of them grabbed it by the tail and twisted it until it would cry. Even knowing that it was a robot, I felt a certain anguish.” It was as a result of this experience, the researcher became interested in the field of social robotics.

We are certainly at a very interesting moment in human history when it comes to the merging of the robot-human world. For at least the last six decades we have had robots in factories and warehouses, but now they are reaching out into other spaces, even our homes and workplaces. While the levels of AI and ML have rapidly accelerated, to the point that these new generations of robots can think, make autonomous decisions and learn, they are not alive and they cannot feel; instead it’s us as human beings who feel for them.   It’s this eureka moment of clarity that Darling insists we need to recognise, emphasise and keep in mind in order to integrate technology more effectively into our daily working (and personal) lives.

Different Types of Intelligence

A commonly made mistake according to the MIT’s Darling, is comparing artificial intelligence with human intelligence: “It’s an analogy that doesn’t make sense to me,” she commented. “Sure, it is true that there are already machines that are much more intelligent than us; that can do infinite calculations, beat us at chess and identify patterns that we would not recognize. However, they are not able to perceive the world or learn in the way that a human does – it is a different type of intelligence.”

Robots therefore should be seen as complementary to human roles not as a replacement for them, such as a co-bot interacting and assisting a picker in a warehouse environment when a product is too heavy or an awkward size.  A greater understanding of how we’re hard wired as a species to interact with other non-human objects, is the key to designing more effective and efficient robots. In relation to supply chains (more broadly) and warehouses (more specifically), both stand to significantly benefit from the exploration and advances in understanding our need to anthropomorphise robots.

With the pandemic finish line in sight - queue a collective inhalation of breath and crossed fingers - now is the perfect time to start assessing which areas of society, commerce and business have been most changed by the events of the past 18 months.   In terms of robotics, investments and uptake have gone through the roof in the last year for obvious reasons and certainly show no sign of slowing down any time soon, so now may well be the perfect time to seriously consider robotics and automation as part of your organisation’s long-term business strategy.

The Future of the Robot

Covid-19 is destined to have a long-term, profound and lasting impact on the way we all work and live; and increasingly, robots and automation are going to play a significant role in both. We may be on course for a true watershed moment in terms of robot uptake in warehouses and supply chains. With more research into the human need to anthropomorphise robots including both warehouse co-bots and in-house automated helpers, the robots of the future will likely look, feel (see I’ve done it right there; robots can’t feel!) and behave very differently to those which we interact with on a near daily basis today.

Read the article on this from our September issue here.

Drone to bring autonomous inventory warehouse solution

Posted on by David Priestman

RAWview Drone Systems Ltd, a UK-based drone automation specialist has announced a new partnership with doks. innovation GmbH, a Germany-based developer of autonomous drone-based inventory management systems.

Thanks to ground-breaking technology, the fully autonomous inventAIRy XL drone system is now able to navigate through even the most complex of warehouse layouts to each individual rack location, where the contents are scanned and reconciled against ERP or WMS records, all without any human supervision or intervention and without any reliance on GPS. This is achieved by combining a drone with barcode scanning sensors, a ground vehicle for autonomous navigation and a docking station for autonomous battery charging. The result is an elegant solution that overcomes the biggest limitations of drone-based inventory control: flight endurance, unsupervised operation, and fully autonomous navigation within GPS and light-deprived environments.

Key selling points of the solution:
• Longest operating endurance on the market – 5 hours of fully autonomous operation, compared to approximately 20 minutes of other systems
• Highest workrate on the market – a single inventAIRy XL unit can scan in excess of 2000 rack locations per autonomous mission, compared to approximately 120 rack locations of other systems
• Zero modifications required to facility’s infrastructure
• Autonomous recharging – other systems require manual swapping and recharging of drone batteries
• Ability to operate completely unsupervised and in darkness, ie. between shifts or when warehouse is closed
More importantly, by combining their expertise, the two companies are taking away another major pain point of warehouse operators who are looking to implement drone-based inventory control – the time and resources required to fully deploy and integrate drones into inventory processes.

Traditionally, the process of finding and implementing an appropriate drone solution for autonomous inventory reconciliation is time-consuming, complex, and expensive. In contrast, this partnership gives warehouse management teams access to a 360-degree solution that encompasses pre-deployment feasibility, supply and installation of hardware and software, and ongoing customer support. This means warehouse operators can seamlessly and cost-effectively transition to fully autonomous drone-based inventory control, with virtually no disruption to their normal operation.

Joe Waldron, Product Integration Director at RAWview said:

“As warehouse and project management teams seek to reduce cost, improve safety, and protect themselves against falling labour resources, they are increasingly turning to task automation technologies – one of the latest innovations in this space is drone-based inventory reconciliation.

“During initial conversations with doks. innovations’ management team, it quickly became clear that both companies shared the same fundamental goal – to help businesses work safer, smarter, and more profitably. However, a shared goal was only the starting point; we needed to be sure that the technology behind our solution would meet the aspirations of our customers, and having conducted extensive analysis across the drone technology ecosystem, we concluded that doks. innovation offered a completely unique proposition, which is perfectly placed to resolve our customers’ most challenging inventory management problems, and one that will help us to meet and exceed our customers’ ROI expectations.”

Benjamin Federmann, CEO of doks. innovation added: “As any warehouse manager will know, manual inventory counts are ill-suited to high volume and high velocity operations. With accelerating supply chains, warehouses are forced to assign more time and labour resources to stocktaking activities. Furthermore, scanning thousands of bin locations manually is inevitably prone to human error, which leads to discrepancies in WMS inventory records. Manual inventory operations also present very real safety risks to warehouse employees. These are the issues we set out to eliminate with the inventAIRy XL system.

“Welcoming RAWview as a sales and support partner means that customers receive a critical layer of hassle-free implementation, service, and support – all provided by a leading drone technology specialist.”

Voice rollout across 92 Coca-Cola bottling sites

Posted on by David Priestman

The Ehrhardt Partner Group (EPG) has boosted its reputation with the successful rollout of its LYDIA™ Voice technology to 92 CONA locations, a total that is set to rise to over 100. CONA is the IT services company for the Coca-Cola bottling business in North America, with over 160,000 sales orders and an average of 30000 users per day. Its implementation and rapid rollout of LYDIA™ Voice is a fantastic endorsement for EPG, the Germany-based global supply chain software provider and voice picking innovator.

“LYDIA Voice is the best thing we have ever rolled out to the warehouse. Where has it been these last five years?” This is the valuable feedback coming directly from the bottlers of Coca-Cola who use EPG’s software on a daily basis. And this user experience is backed up by a number of facts. According to CONA, LYDIA Voice has brought productivity gains of up to 7% as well as clear voice recognition, the elimination of voice template training, and a more coordinated system architecture compared to the previous voice system. “The implementation of LYDIA at Coke One North America is of enormous significance for us,” emphasises Marco Ehrhardt, President of EPG. “The rollout to the 92 locations was completed in just twelve months.”

Consistency and clarity

CONA recognised the need to consider new voice solutions in 2019. Its previous system was prone to weak or intermittent connections. CONA required a solution that would al-low for continuous picking – independent of the network connection – should the Wi-Fi signal be weak or lost.
“Our previous voice system had a complex architecture and required the software to be hosted and run on individual servers at each deployment site,” explains Baron Jordan, CONA Chief Product Officer, Supply Chain. “There were also issues concerning inconsistent voice recognition.”

After an intensive eight-month investigation by CONA and a real-world test against an-other provider, LYDIA Voice emerged as the clear winner due to being able to meet all the tough requirements of Baron Jordan and his team. LYDIA Voice immediately resolved the architecture and support challenges across the 92 bottling sites thanks to its ability to directly integrate with SAP via a remote function call (RFC) without middleware.

The solution also offers an unsurpassed level of voice recognition, which is enabled by its deep neural network voice recognition. Training requirements are swept away altogether due to its immediate ease of use and its versatility. LYDIA is able to recognise more than 50 languages and a multitude of dialects.

A further advantage of the product is that it is device-independent, meaning that each location can select its preferred mobile voice device according to environment or preference. Customised adaptions in the voice dialogue can be independently created by the customer without having to call on EPG technicians or developers.

https://www.lydia-voice.com/gb/voice-know-how/case-studies/cona-services-success-story/

Managing change to smooth technology transition

Posted on by David Priestman

A massive shift to digital solutions is now well underway in warehousing but, as more companies make the move from manual to automated processes, do we risk leaving our employees behind? By SnapFulfil CEO, Tony Dobson.

Bosses need to prepare their staff accordingly to embrace new technology as an opportunity, rather than perceive it as a threat. It takes both clear communication and a willingness to learn – and especially around the cultural shift to slick, best-of-breed WMS from an onerous and manual paper-based system.

At SnapFulfil, we’ve supported many clients in the journey away from paper-based warehouse management. In many ways, implementing the operational improvements is the most straightforward element of the transition to a WMS. Bringing your people along with you is more nuanced. Warehouse operatives will be used to a certain way of working and will need to truly understand the benefit of change and feel fully supported throughout the journey.

One of our clients summed up the challenge perfectly, suggesting that introducing a warehouse operative to a tier 1 WMS without the proper support is: “like putting people used to driving a Ford Fiesta into a F1 car and expecting them to figure it out!” So it pays to plan ahead and create internal comms and strategies to win the hearts and minds of managers and operators who cling to the old and established (but highly
inefficient) ways and resist change.

Any change management plan worth its salt must identify and communicate the obvious benefits in a meaningful way, so for me the following four established fundamentals go a long way toward achieving buy-in from your
employees:

Formalise what’s about to happen – start by developing a list of actions you have to take before implementing the WMS, including all the digital advancements, new dashboards and other systematic procedures you’ll need to learn.

Then define the change itself for all levels of staff to build a clear picture of the training and pre-emptive support required to get everyone on the same page.

Determine what to measure and how – state your goals clearly and also break them down relative to change management. How quickly do you want teams to start using the new system? What measurements are required after you implement a phase of the project? How can you ascertain if someone is using the software correctly?

Narrowing each big goal into a small measurable piece for each position helps you ensure that you’ve thought about the WMS holistically and are ready for the knock-on effects it may have. For example, more efficient workers mean inventory and accuracy both improve, with less time required to fix miss-picks and address performance issues, creating more opportunities to explore further cost-saving improvements.

Prioritise help and support – your team will have concerns and questions along the way, so providing a feedback tool is essential. You’ll also need to communicate that feedback to everyone involved. For example, consider setting up a series of online informational sessions, or lunch & learns, to build an open line of communication between management and your pick, pack and ship teams.

Promote training and professional development – help employees develop new skill sets to manage these more advanced WMS solutions. Providing training sessions is a great way to show you’re investing in people as well as technology and will help increase employee satisfaction and performance, as well as preparing them for their new roles.

In short, make it easy for your staff to ask for help and you’ve got the best chance of getting ahead of any implementation and adoption issues.

This along with proper planning, communication and investment will help speed your warehouse operations – and your employees – into this here-to-stay and rewarding age of digital fulfilment.

SPICT starts bulk coffee operations

Posted on by Keith McKinley

South Pacific International Container Terminal (SPICT) in Lae, Papua New Guinea recently handled its first delivery of coffee bags following the recent opening of its coffee bulking facility.

SPICT took delivery of 320 bags of green coffee beans from Monpi Coffee Exports Ltd, one of the country’s major coffee producers and the first to avail of SPICT’s newest service offering. The shipment was bound for export to Melbourne, Australia.

“We thank Monpi Coffee Exports for trusting SPICT to handle their valuable commodity,” said Robert Maxwell, SPICT chief executive officer. “After almost a year of securing the necessary permits from state regulators and consultation with coffee experts across the country, we are now ready to provide the highest level of service to PNG’s coffee industry.”

SPICT’s coffee bulking facility offers a 2,000 sq m fully equipped warehouse manned by a specialised team dedicated to coffee handling and storage operations. The warehouse is compliant with all the requirements set by Coffee Industry Corporation (CIC), which regulates the coffee industry. SPICT assures customers of readily available containers from all shipping lines, as well as zero risk of missed sailings for shipments approved by the CIC and other concerned agencies.

“Opening the coffee bulking facility is one of our major accomplishments for this year,” added Maxwell. “Having a young and capable team, along with ICTSI’s cargo-handling expertise, we look forward to helping PNG’s coffee industry grow by helping exporters capitalise on opportunities from the increasing global demand for coffee.”

Coffee production is one of PNG’s major industries and provides income to more than three million Papua New Guineans. Majority of the country’s coffee production is centred on Arabica and Robusta, and around 99.9% of PNG’s coffee is exported as green beans. The country’s coffee trade is well positioned to benefit from new market opportunities.

SPICT enjoys exceptional connectivity with the Morobe and the Highlands region, which accounts for more than 90% of the country’s coffee production. A key trade facilitator and the largest container handling facility in PNG, SPICT continues to set the standard for port operations in the country and looks to establish itself as the premiere gateway for PNG’s coffee trade.

Extor expands business area

Posted on by Keith McKinley

Extor GmbH has already successfully established itself in tyre logistics with the RoverLog stacker cranes. Now the company wants to set new impulses in micro fulfilment and in the entire intralogistics with its clever storage systems.

More and more companies are opting for the introduction of automated systems in intralogistics. Extor’s RoverLog system offers warehouse solutions for goods with high turnover rates and low logistics margins. The Hanover-based company was founded in 2016 as a subsidiary of the online tyre retailer Delticom in order to develop an individual and intelligent solution for in-house tyre storage and logistics.

The basic idea behind the RoverLog system was to store large-volume goods in a space-saving, automated, flexible and cost-effective manner in the smallest of spaces. It was introduced as an alternative to the storage and picking infrastructure for tyres that previously had to be transported to their destination via conveyor belts or picked with forklifts.

Jörn von der Lippe, managing director of Extor GmbH, has now taken over all of the company’s shares from the parent company and was able to gain NBank as a further shareholder, which now holds 15% of the shares.

“The idea and implementation of the RoverLog concept is so good and so successful that we are growing and want to transfer it to other areas,” confirms the robotics specialist and business economist von der Lippe. The concept is unique in many areas and has some advantages over comparable systems: products that can be placed in cargo containers can be seven times as large as those of the competition. In addition, the moving cars are able to travel over essentially unlimited distances within the storage system – and that with availability around the clock.

A kind of rail network runs underneath the storage areas, on which wagons move at a speed of up to 2.4m/s and through which they receive their electricity. The resulting braking and kinetic energy is reused by means of recuperation.

With the spin-off, the start-up is in a position to open up further industries and to address interested parties who have previously been in competition. The company produces small to medium-sized series itself.

“Intralogistics is in the transition from large, rigid systems to modular, flexible and data-based solutions,” confirms Martin Ranic, investment manager at NBank Capital. “Extor stands for a team with a visionary idea.”

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