The Kloosterboer Delta Terminal was to be converted from its software predecessor PMain to the current warehouse execution system Savanna.NET® by December 2020. The Dutch integrated supply chain company for frozen food products commissioned the intralogistics specialist Westfalia with this task in February 2020. Westfalia was able – despite the limitations imposed due to the Corona pandemic – to successfully complete the project within the desired time schedule.  Working remotely, Westfalia’s experienced and well-coordinated software team replaced the previous software running at the automated high-bay coldstore running on 24/7 with 62,000 storage spaces in the port of Rotterdam with its current warehouse management and material flow software. The software development team conducted all tests and commissioning remotely from Westfalia’s headquarters in Borgholzhausen.

“The joint achievement was possible because we have been collaborating successfully for 20 years and we know the customer’s local business operations very well,” notes Adrian Pfreundschuh, responsible Head of Product Management Software & IT at Westfalia. The system changeover was necessary because the first of the three automated Kloosterboer high-bay coldstore implemented by Westfalia so far was still operating with the Savanna.NET® predecessor PMain. Cool Port 2 high-bay in Rotterdam, the fourth fully automated Westfalia coldstore with 60,000 storage spaces currently being implemented, is expected to be commissioned in early 2022. Westfalia is developing the WES and manufacturing the conveyor technology as well as storage and retrieval machines including PLC control systems.

Virtual strategy tests had already been running since May. “We created a digital twin of the entire warehouse on a server and emulated the connection to the control system. All movements and strategies were tested and optimised during the process,” adds Born. From October the team performed step-by-step coupling tests to the existing material flow technology.

For three weeks, the cross-operational team prepared the remote commissioning process. From mid-October to mid-December, Westfalia’s software experts spent every second weekend switching the existing system to the new system. “We checked if the existing hardware such as conveyor technology, PLC control systems, sensors and peripheral devices were communicating correctly with the new software,” explains application developer Timo Espenschied.

“At the beginning of December, we finally updated to the new software,” says Espenschied. That process was completed quite smoothly. “It turned out that the interface of an old PLC component was too slow and we had to artificially slow down the telegram rate of Savanna.NET®. It was quite complex to finally find the source of the bottleneck,” explains Senior Project Manager Reto Castagno. Since 2002, Castagno has helped conceptualise the software for every Kloosterboer system. The experience bundled at Westfalia paid off when it came to problem analysis. Software architect Stefan Behrendt who has been working for the company for 25 years developed a solution for the particular problem. “Stefan extracted the right indicators from numerous log files in an incredibly short period of time and was able to fall back on his comprehensive experience from the previous commissioning process,” says Castagno.

For Thomas Schoch, International Sales Manager at Westfalia, this is another chapter in the long-standing successful partnership. “With our Warehouse Execution System, Kloosterboer simultaneously receives a tailored interface for its own customers to enable maximum transparency of their own logistics services. Through this commissioning, all automated Kloosterboer high-bay coldstores have been updated to the same release. They are thus effectively networked. This way, processes that are defined for one of the warehouse systems can be implemented more quickly for all others.”