Herma (PSIwms)

The HERMA GmbH company with the headquarters in Stuttgart is the leader in the European market in the field of self-adhesive materials and technologies in this area. Now in the company about 800 employees are employed at three enterprises near the city of Stuttgart, and its turnover in 2003 made 154 million euros. The HERMA company consists of independently operating divisions: the gluing materials, the label equipment and paper goods. Creation of the logistic center worth 15 million euros means for the company transition to "new measurement" in terms of terms, flexibility and quality of deliveries in the conditions of permanent increase in a share of small batches and acceleration of deliveries.

Core of the new center is the automatic 11-row warehouse for small products from 100.000 places for storage, and the pipeline for a complete set and packaging of orders executed in the form of an extension to the existing warehouse; and also - a new warehouse management system and supports of the systems of voice actuation of Pick-by-voice and Transport-by-voice in a pallet 5700 places warehouse for a large-size load.

Requirements

In addition to the planned operational processes, HERMA in technical specifications defined also other requirements. It was talked of a number of functions, such as detailed complex analysis, mid-term planning of resources and function of archiving. The organization of the control panel which could plan taking into account data on expired orders capacity utilization by means of modeling was other feature. Besides, to the software.

Functionality of the PSIwms system

• The interface for communication with SAP/R3 and management of a warehouse
• Management of basic data
• Services of inventory and accounting
• Goods receipt accounting
• System of voice actuation of the piler
• Order processing
• Complete set with the Pick-by-voice system according to the scheme "the person to goods" in a pallet warehouse
• Complete set according to the scheme "goods to the person" in a warehouse of small units
• Display of documents and transferred from the SAP instructions in workplaces
• The control panel for planning
• Archive server
• Reports and statistics
• Inventory in real time

Transition to a new system

The detailed concept of input of a system in operation developed jointly with all key partners of the project provided risk minimization in the course of system implementation in the conditions of the functioning enterprise. The plan for implementation included the detailed list of actions for implementation of separate components and also two-stage commissioning of all system in general. At the first stage the new software, including communication with SAP without connection of new components of the equipment in operation was tested. At the second stage was communication of a warehouse management system and the server of accounting of material flows is activated, new components of the equipment are connected, and the container terminal was filled under control of a new warehouse management system. Previously tested functions and the interface by means of the automated testing provided steady transition to a new system.

Hardware configuration

As the server for WMS the computer system of the increased reliability on the basis of Windows 2000 was implemented. The server provides efficiency and system availability, and is configured on cluster technology.