The Customer

The PHW Group is one of Germany’s leading food producers. With nearly 6,000 employees, it generated revenue of just under 2.5 billion euros in the 2012/13 fiscal year, in part through WIESENHOF—Germany’s best-known poultry brand. In the immediate vicinity of a production facility, Allfein Feinkost GmbH, the PHW Group has constructed a frozen-food logistics center near Magdeburg in two construction phases, with space for approximately 31,500 pallets. As was previously the case at the production facilities in Zerbst and Lohne, the company Schönau was commissioned to design and build the pallet conveyor system for feeding the massive freezer.

Technical Specifications

• Items to be transported: EURO and INDU pallets
• Dimensions: max. 1,200 x 1,000 x 2,000 mm
• Capacity: 125 Pal/hr
• Load capacity: up to 1,200 kg
• Operating conditions: Warehouse and loading dock -28 °C
• Control Room (NSHV) +20 °C
• Drives: SEW-MoviSwitch
• Control system: Siemens S7-315 2DP
• Decentralized Peripherals: 6 Sub-Distribution Panels with Profibus ET200
• Controls: 10-inch touchscreen, networked PCs

Design

Along the conveyor lines, which have a total length of over 850 m, the pallets are transported on two levels and distributed among the six drive-in rack storage blocks using 16 turntables. The conveyor system serves as an automated storage system with just over 500 pallet storage locations.

Design Details

No interruption in the cold chain. In the frozen pre-zone of the warehouse, pallets are loaded at ground level at one of three storage points. After scanner identification followed by automatic weight and contour checks, each pallet is assigned to a target storage block either manually in batches or individually via an interface to the PHW warehouse management computer.

Vertical conveyors lift the pallets to the goods receipt level, and they are then routed along the conveyor lines—based on virtual tracking—to the accumulation roller conveyor of the corresponding storage block, where they are made available for storage by reach trucks. Retrieval takes place without any level changes, directly beneath the goods-in conveyors.