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.

Part of the reorganization measures at the AWT facility of the University Hospital/Tübingen consisted of equipping a weighing device at the last buffer conveyor location in front of the lift at the pharmaceuticals dispatching station.

Four computerized weighing cells control that the container will neither be overloaded, nor interfere with the transport of AWT carriers. An overloaded container will not be allowed to automatically continue, as it causes an error message and will therefore be stopped. To remedy this, the container will be manually dragged back and be at least partially discharged, before it is allowed to continue.

Expanding their factory in Shenyang-Dadong with a new body shop for the popular long version of the BMW 5 series, BMW/BAA ordered all necessary EMS entirely from AFT Schopfheim.

A typical intercompany-project for AFT. AFT Schopfheim as the general contractor is in charge (of engineering etc.), while AFT Shanghai directly delivers subsections such as steel construction, production and assembly. Production launch is scheduled for the middle of 2016.

In the north of the factory premises a process house was built by Audi Ingolstadt. With its nine floors it towers 42 m in the sky.

The finished cars, delivered from the final assembly to the new hall via pallet conveyor technique, are now, before completion of works, branched via conveyor technology. For this purpose large twin lifting tables as well as conveyors cross- and lengthwise were installed. With the help of the large AFT lifting stations, the cars are lifted to the upper floors of the process house. There, they are provided for internal completion or delivery to the customer center in the Audi Forum. The AFT lifting stations with a length of stroke of 42 m are designed for the transport of all types of Audi cars. The lifting speed is 1,5 meters per second. The ground floor of the new process house also contains the division special finish for the completion of the vehicles. There, AFT floor conveyor technique is used on a grand scale. Two twin lane slat conveyors in stainless composition were installed by AFT. Additionally, AFT delivered and installed two vehicle washing and drying systems as well as a leak tightness testing facility for the vehicles. With the help of the approx. 50 meters long twin lane slat conveyors, the high-quality Audi models are transported through these systems fully automated.
Afterwards, the vehicles are committed fully automated to passenger belts for workers, which are 3,6 meters wide and 90 meters long. The two systems consist of multi-leg steel chains, which are connected to a surface with the help of ergonomic supporting plates. On these driving test and activity conveyors, terminal workings are carried out by Audi staff. Finally, two standard circuit conveyor systems with battery load preservation devices make sure, that it is possible to finally test the electronic system of the cars.