Fast cantilever warehouse for sensitive foils
Steel and metal industry
Tough as steel
Steel is one of the most important materials in modern societies. It forms the basis for buildings, bridges, rails, vehicles, machines, energy plants, and many everyday products. Without steel, infrastructure, industrial production, and technical progress in their current form would not be possible. As a key economic sector, the steel industry creates numerous jobs worldwide and is closely linked to many other industries, such as construction, the automotive industry, and mechanical engineering.
Intralogistics concepts in the steel industry present specific challenges.
Efficient transport and storage
Compared to many other industries, the main challenges here are the heavy weight of the products, the harsh environmental conditions, and the enormous process dynamics. Steel is moved in the form of slabs, billets, coils, sheets, profiles, or pipes—often with unit weights ranging from several tons to several dozen tons. Accordingly, storage systems, conveyor technology, and material flow systems must be designed for very high loads. Shelving and crane systems require an exceptionally robust construction, while conveyor systems must withstand extreme mechanical loads.
Further challenges
Temperatures: During casting, rolling, or forging, materials are sometimes transported while still hot. Intralogistics must therefore be designed to be heat-resistant and wear-resistant. Conveyor technology, sensor technology, and control components are exposed to thermal stress, dust, scale, and vibrations.
Integration of internal logistics: Buffer zones and temporary storage areas must be carefully dimensioned to compensate for fluctuations in the production flow without causing unnecessary capital commitment or space consumption.
Diversity: Coils, for example, vary considerably in diameter, width, and weight. Long products vary in length and profile shape. This heterogeneity requires flexible storage strategies and intelligent control algorithms to ensure efficient use of space and short access times.
Safety requirements: Handling extremely heavy loads, automated crane systems, and hot materials poses considerable potential hazards. Traffic routes for industrial trucks, crane runways, and automated transport systems must be clearly structured and monitored. Modern safety and assistance systems are necessary.
Intralogistics Concepts for Steel and Metal
Especially in the steel and metal industry, high-performance intralogistics solutions are required for the transport of steel beams, copper tubes or car body panels weighing several tons. Automatic crane systems, stacker cranes and AGVs must be extremely robust, while at the same time being equipped with the latest smart features such as positioning and control systems. Intelligent material storage systems play a central role, with input and output cycle times becoming ever shorter and the integrated software architecture ever more sophisticated.
For several decades, numerous well-known manufacturers have relied on our expertise. We ensure optimal and integrated logistics processes. Not only is it important to integrate all transport routes and warehouse management, at the same time it is essential to integrate success-critical topics such as Industry 4.0 and AI into the intralogistics concept.
Solutions for sheet metal production
For several decades, material flow and storage systems for sheet metal plates have been among our core competencies. We work out turnkey system solutions combining innovative approaches with tried and tested system concepts. From powerful automatic storage and retrieval machines at SSAB in Sweden to innovative high-bay warehouse and transport technology for numerous customers in the automotive industry, we offer custom-made solutions for any application.
Solutions for metal wire production
Highly automated, powerful intralogistics concepts ensure productive systems and competitiveness in wire production. In this respect, we offer comprehensive storage systems with automatic storage and retrieval machines, innovative material flow systems for transport, repositioning, lifting and turning of materials as well as transfer carriages or tilting tables with a load capacity of up to 400 t.
Solutions for pipe production
Particularly automatic crane systems are the top priority for quick and safe long-distance transport of heavy materials like metal pipelines, e.g. in area storage facilities. Thanks to powerful drive systems, maximum transport speeds of 360 m/min in horizontal direction and 90 m/min in vertical direction can be reached. Load capacities of 50 t and more can be achieved. Optimized material flow systems offer optimum connection to upstream and downstream transport and storage areas.
