Bundling expertise at Lünen
With net sales of EUR 1.7 billion, Kamps leads the baking industry in Germany and the Netherlands. The company forms part of Italy's Barilla Group, the international market leader for pasta and bakery products.
In Germany, Kamps has a workforce of 10,896 staff, with prepacked bread and bakery products accounting for some 80% of its annual turnover, in addition to the bake-off segment. It bakes fresh bread every day at 22 production sites throughout Germany, making 1100 journeys to deliver fresh produce to grocery retailers. Brands such as LIEKEN URKORN and GOLDEN TOAST stand for the quality offered by the company. The bake-off business has been characterised by rapid growth, and at present Kamps delivers to 4,000 retail outlets. It also has 1050 so-called bakery shops.
When KAMPS AG invests some EUR 300 million in Germany over the course of the next three years, most of the capital will be channelled into these areas. To step up its presence in the north and east of Germany even further, the company plans to focus on the region of Mecklenburg-West Pomerania, aiming to invest around EUR 90 million in the new site of Lüdersdorf. The site was scheduled to open for business with a staff of 250 at the end of 2005.
But innovation at Kamps does not just involve new sites: the company is also modernising and extending existing sites via state-of-the-art technology. This is the case in Lünen.
Initial situation
To start with, the company Kamps Brot- und Backwaren did not have a freezer warehouse at the Lünen site until 2001 and was therefore unable to comply with the logistical strategy for storing frozen products.
Secondly, reorganisation and expansion of the sales areas at Kamps was to improve supply to the branches overall. Greater autonomy for Lünen has meant that the site now itself stores the packaging materials required for production there. In 2001, Westfalia Storage Systems was asked to think about organising the storage logistics at Wendeln Brot.
Problem and scope of delivery
The task was to design a freezer warehouse and a storage facility for the packaging material. Both were to be housed in a new building, taking the form of a silo.
Westfalia was to supply five storage and retrieval vehicles (SRVs), racks, Satellite® profiles and material handling technology. In addition, the specifications included electrical and PLC systems. The warehouse management computer plus software was also to be provided by Westfalia.
Storage concept
The fully automatic high-density Satellite® warehouse for frozen products and the storage system for packaging material consists of 8 storage blocks altogether, offering a storage capacity of 5000 pallet positions in total.
The freezer warehouse is equipped with four storage and retrieval vehicles and one at the packaging store. The materials handling technology provided consists of gravity roller, chain and queuing conveyors, as well as hoists and a roller conveyor.
Retrieval and storage
The packaging material delivered is labelled and registered automatically, before being either put into storage or sent to the production facility if required. Before the empty pallets are delivered to the production cycle, they are subjected to a runner and contour check.
Lünen is responsible for producing different types of bread and other bakery products. They are first of all removed from the production facility via the in-house transport system and conveyed to the wrapping station. Wrapping is followed by labelling of the goods. On handover, the information for the load units encrypted in a bar code are automatically registered by a scanner and transmitted to the warehouse management computer. The computer then allocates the optimum storage position for the goods. The quality assurance system also includes registering the use-by date.
If necessary, this can be traced back via the warehousing system and the product pallets and production batches identified. The frozen products ordered are distributed from the warehouse via the dispatch department. The provision zone incorporated there is designed for a capacity of 6 truckloads plus 2 express tracks. Retrieval is via a transverse transport vehicle with a capacity of 200 pallets per hour.
The goods destined for dispatch pass through triangular locks, with two removal tracks being connected to each of the three locks.
At Kamps in Lünen, production is in three shifts, around the clock. To make sure that the goods ordered are sent out to the right consignees, products are registered and checked again with a handheld scanner when loading the bread and bakery products. The process finishes with a check of the items against the delivery note. Both storage facilities were commissioned in 2002.
Summary
By investing in the automated warehouse in Lünen, Kamps AG has maintained its policy of consistent logistics optimisation. This offers the company a top-class storage capacity. Networking production with the automated Satellite® deep freeze warehouse offers options e.g., for fast coordination between the sale and repeat production of an article, a key requisite for flexible production that caters for customer needs at all times.
