Georg Fischer (PSIwms)

The Georg Fischer industrial company which is nowadays working worldwide was founded in 1802 in Schaffhausen. Now 15.000 employees are employed in the company, it consists of three divisions: transport equipment, technology equipment and pipeline systems.

Basis of shipment of components of pipelines is the center of distribution which is specially constructed for this purpose in 1990 in Schaffhausen worldwide. Round the clock in local sales offices on all globe in electronic form orders which then are transferred to order department in the center of distribution Schaffhausen are taken.

The automated high-rack warehouse expected 20000 warehouse places is intended for storage of oversized and heavy articles. Small and average products are stored in 34500 containers of the automated warehouse of small parts. Lengthy loads as, for example, pipes are placed in special storages for lengthy loads. Besides, there are specialized warehouse of manual service for names of class C and dangerous loads and also the external warehouse working under control of a warehouse management system and SAP.

Requirements

To satisfy the growing requirements of the market, in 1999 the company made the decision on upgrade of the center of distribution. PSI Logistics company received the contract for replacement of the used software for management of a warehouse. Without noises for current transactions, it was necessary to integrate into the central computer system and to test the existing separate controllers of components of the warehouse and hoisting-and-transport equipment. At a development stage in Dortmund the simulator which imitated behavior of controllers of the bottom level was used.

With the assistance of the customer this project was successfully implemented in 18 months. Special requirements to a project team of PSI Logistics and the customer were connected with complexity of business processes of the enterprise and a variety of interfaces.

Task / Implementation

Along with upgrade of the software, a task of this project there was also an optimization of transactions. The most different strategy of the modern distribution center were tested and adapted to specific needs of the client:

• Receiving loads from external suppliers
• Incoming inspection (on quality) and processing of returns
• Placement on storage using the hoisting-and-transport equipment of the load arriving from a production site
• Complete set by the principle "the person to goods / goods to the person" with technology of paperless selection Pick To Light
• Consolidation of orders
• Replenishment action
• Management of routes
• Fast assembly
• Functions of the control panel
• The archive server for long-term evaluation
• Management of an external warehouse
• Possibilities of clients in different processes / Documents for each client
• Interfaces to different controllers
• Interfaces to a higher ERP system (SAP) and a forwarding system (TM/3)
• Connection to the external tool of the analysis of a zagruzennost and performance
• Formation of multilingual consignment documents and transport documents for different forwarding agents
• Runtime less than 24 hours for 70% of orders; express orders with sending on the same day
• Integration with SAP as the subordinate system keeping stock accounting
• The graphical interface with the special color scheme

Configuration

The system of high reliability of production Hewlett Packard consisting of two L2000 HP 9000 nodes with two processors for each node provides fault-free operation of 5 days in a week in 2 changes. On loaders graphic radio terminals for data transmission of production ads-tec with the user Java interface are installed. Portable data terminal Teklogix. Processes in different workplaces are supported using user by Java interfaces. Oracle 8.1.7 provides reliable data storage.