AFT High Bay Warehouse for car bodies

High bay warehouse for car bodies

AFT has accumulated – through numerous deliveries at home and abroad – extensive experience in car body storage technology.

A Dutch carmaker ordered from AFT, at the end of 2013, the realization of a complete high-bay warehouse for car bodies. AFT became the general contractor.
The 20 m High Bay Warehouse poses with his 420 storage pitches, as a capacity buffer between the production areas “shell” and “paint”. For the placement strategy of the production control system (PCS), requirements of the warehouse management prevail. The PCS allocates the different body types evenly onto the three storage lanes. It also keeps travelling distances of the stacker cranes at a minimum by preferably allocating storage pitches close to the outlet. The car bodies will then be outsourced, by the Stacker Crane, according customer orders to get the desired paint job. However, before being painted, the car bodies will be closely inspected if any post-processing is necessary. So called Body Bars serve as transport and storage assistive equipment. They are mounted on the bottom side of the car bodies, closely following its contours, to ensure an exact positioning and damage free handling. They will be removed before the bottom assemblies are brought on its way to the paint shop. Three, around twenty meter tall Stacker Cranes, will regularly serve 24/7 on almost eight meter long lanes after the initial production phase. AFT meets the high requirements of the car manufacturer, concerning entire system availability, reliability and performance, already today.
AFT implemented this project in the Netherlands. Planning, layout and realization comprised all production and storage relevant devices, including electrical control and storage management software and last not least, steel construction of the storage rack and the entire building itself. Entire building has to be taken literally here, as it comprises even the sprinkler system, heating (and their related control systems), walls and roof. AFT has put all this into reality during a time span of only six months.