Category: Manufacturing

Dematic

Banbury, UK

A Dematic Warehouse

Challenges

  • Visualize and manage highly complex, large-scale warehouse automation systems handling tens of thousands of items across geographically distributed retail operations.
  • Maintain high system availability by quickly identifying, localizing, and resolving mechanical and electrical issues within dense, fast-moving logistics environments.
  • Standardize visualization, alarming, and reporting across more than 120 systems while reducing engineering effort and ensuring consistent application quality.

Results

  • Faster issue resolution and higher system availability through real-time, pan-and-zoom warehouse visualization that helps supervisors quickly locate blockages and dispatch engineers.
  • Reduced engineering effort and improved application quality using modular visualization components that can be reused across projects, speeding deployment and lowering development costs.
  • Continuous performance improvement and stronger customer confidence enabled by integrated alarming and reporting with root-cause annotation, supporting optimization and demonstrating system value.

“They really understand what we do and what we need; when I make a support call it does not matter to who I speak as they all know who we are, what we do and at what level to address our request. We never need to escalate a support request - we leave Mitsubishi Electric Iconics Digital Solutions to do that.”

— Joe White | Dematic

About Dematic

Dematic is a market leader in innovative logistics automation systems and solutions. With industry expertise acquired over decades, Dematic is committed to worldwide service. Dematic designs, develops and supplies a comprehensive portfolio of products for logistics systems including automatic storage and retrieval machines, conveying and sorting systems, order picking systems, voice technology and palletizing systems.

A key element of any Dematic solution is the ability to visualize the exact status of all parts of a system to ensure availability is high. Built on Mitsubishi Electric Iconics Digital Solutions’ GENESIS technology, Dematic systems make use of powerful features to produce effective logistics solutions. Dematic’s warehouses can be extraordinarily large on account of retailers outsourcing their warehousing.

When handling as many as 34,000 items or supplies to 700 retail stores, automation and visualization are key functions.

“They really understand what we do and what we need; when I make a support call it does not matter to who I speak as they all know who we are, what we do and at what level to address our request. We never need to escalate a support request - we leave Mitsubishi Electric Iconics Digital Solutions to do that.”

— Joe White | Dematic
Control Room in a Dematic Warehouse Control Room in a Dematic Warehouse

Software Deployed

Dematic uses Mitsubishi Electric Iconics Digital Solutions' GENESIS, enjoying the benefits of GraphWorX, AlarmWorX, TrendWorX and ReportWorX.

Control Room in a Dematic Warehouse Control Room in a Dematic Warehouse
Miniload Automated Storage and Retrieval Systems (AS/RS) in a Dematic facility Miniload Automated Storage and Retrieval Systems (AS/RS) in a Dematic facility

Key Features

With 30 installations across 25 warehouses in the UK alone, there are over 120 GENESIS systems installed in Dematic’s network.

Dematic’s business is frequently based and measured on availability, or the capability of the logistics system to function. Dematic depends on the pan-and-zoom feature to navigate large high-resolution screens. 

Blockages in the warehouse require fast and accurate action, and the pan-and-zoom feature of GENESIS’ worldview is the best tool to solve the problem.

Miniload Automated Storage and Retrieval Systems (AS/RS) in a Dematic facility Miniload Automated Storage and Retrieval Systems (AS/RS) in a Dematic facility
Receiving Screen Receiving Screen

Project Summary

Looking at the Dematic worldview reveals a finely detailed spider web-like diagram of the warehouse’s physical layout. Mechanical and electrical components are color coded according to their status. The warehouse supervisor can both pan and zoom with built-in GENESIS features to get accurate localized information and then dispatch a “jam-buster” or engineer by radio to investigate and solve the problem.

GENESIS’ symbol technology allows Dematic engineers to develop modular solutions within the visualization software. This has shown to deliver significant engineering savings when implemented on subsequent projects.

Application quality is also inherently improved as the modules are thoroughly tested in development and repeatedly proven through use. Dematic systems require alarms and events to be reported. Reporting is automated, but engineers on location of the event can input extra information using drop-down menus. This annotation is added to the alarm to provide root-cause information for later analysis. All data is captured allowing for continuous improvements to be made, and high warehouse availability to be sustained.

Receiving Screen Receiving Screen
Pallet Screen Pallet Screen

Benefits of the System

Dematic’s use of GENESIS plays a significant role in the development of Dematic’s business. The enhanced visualization that has been engineered provides a very tangible feature when Dematic is discussing new business. A customer can readily see what it would be like to run their new systems using the Dematic Visualization System.

Pallet Screen Pallet Screen

Conclusion

Mitsubishi Electric Iconics Digital Solutions' GENESIS is a major part of Dematic’s future direction and capability. Warehouse visualization places heavy demands on a SCADA system and GENESIS is up to the challenge. Tight integration of visualization, alarming and reporting tools results in a solution that provides Dematic with high levels of availability through fast and accurate information processing from the automation level.