Time to invest in application advice

Industrial truck manufacturer Linde Material Handling, under the name "Linde warehouse and logistic consulting", has put together an enhanced, modular package for both material flow and storage planning as well as fleet planning. The objective of this service is to factor in all alternatives and variables by means of analysis, simulation and data evaluation before making a decision to invest. At the end of this process, the customer can therefore be certain that the most economical solution has been found for their application or intralogistic project.

Denis Schreeck, Product Manager at Linde MH, emphasises that "when it comes to planning new storage areas and restructuring or expanding existing storage areas, the Linde consulting service will recommend solutions to ongoing material flow problems and capacity bottlenecks as well as the most economical fleet formations". This is because the benefits of employing a consulting service usually outweigh the costs involved, as nothing is more frustrating than securing an active investment and then realising that it could have been done better.

There are often several alternatives to choose from when planning a new storage area or reorganising an existing facility. Advice on storage areas and logistics and the application of Linde software tools allows competitive options to be visualised and compared with one another, thus making them transparent and comprehensible, even if they are very complicated. For example, the number of pallet storage locations in various storage area systems can be displayed. Similarly, the number of fixed columns that are able to be integrated in a shelving system can also be checked. Regardless of which requirements need to considered, the comparison and three-dimensional illustration of the future storage area ultimately play an important part in finding the right solution for an individual system or layout.

Material flow and warehouse planning are complex logistic systems, in which the trucks and warehouse technology must be perfectly integrated. After layout planning, fleet planning is the second aspect of the Linde service. The focus of fleet planning is to find the most economical industrial truck fleet for individual applications according to type and scope. At first, an analysis is carried out, taking into account all relevant details of the current fleet as well as the logistic procedures. With the help of special software, the most economical and technologically advanced truck types are identified for each part of the logistics process and an overall logistic procedure is recommended. In doing so, all important facts are incorporated, e.g. the maximum number of pallets to be shipped every hour or the capacity utilisation of the trucks. The software ensures that the most productive and, at the same time, the most economical fleets in terms of operating costs are used.

A material flow system is a dynamic system that is constantly changing. This sometimes means that after a certain period of time, the different processes associated with a storage area are not as integrated as initially intended. The overall process is thus less effective. The third aspect of the advisory service comes into effect in order to optimise the process chain once again. In this stage, all procedures associated with the planned distribution system are displayed and simulated virtually so that the most economic solution can be found. To facilitate this, Linde MH has developed its own computer program, which simulates the entire material flow process with all goods movement and acts out all alternative solutions. Customer specifications and the advisor's experience and expertise are incorporated after the analysis phase to provide reliable information about the structural measures and the truck fleet, including performance data, operating hours required, energy and personnel costs. The entire working process is described in detail. At the same time, the material flow is defined in terms of the individual transport tasks. The detailed plans can now be used to implement the project.