OFI Testing Equipment (OFITE), a US provider of test instruments and reagents for the drilling fluids, cementing, and wastewater industries, has invested in an EffiMat storage and retrieval system for the selection of sales and work orders.
Previously, the company relied on eight employees manually performing picking tasks.
“At times people were waiting for an aisle to clear so they could get the parts they needed and it was the same, in reverse, for re-stocking the inventory every morning,” said Dan Wax, director of supply chain and logistics at OFITE.
Now, the installed EffiMat system is used for storage and handling of smaller and expensive parts inventory used to fulfil direct sales and work orders to build finished products.
It stores parts in individual boxes and allows the user to select up to five boxes to be presented simultaneously.
Typically, up to 250 boxes/picks per hour can be achieved and boxes can also be sub-divided to further enhance productivity.
What’s more, it is interfaced with the company’s ERP system for order processing and is currently responsible for more than 3,000 part numbers.
Three people operate the EffiMat system at any one time, which means other order picking staff can be deployed to different tasks.
According to Wax, the company has gained a lot more open floor space thanks to vertical storage, which is now used for collating large orders.
“Greater efficiency and cost savings have resulted from this investment,” said Wax.
EffiMat is available in the UK from IntraLogisteX 2020 exhibitor RARUK Automation.
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https://www.roboticsandautomationmagazine.co.uk/billund-airport-invests-in-storage-robots/
RARUK Automation (stand 210) will be at IntraLogisteX 2020, which will take place on 29 and 30 September at the Ricoh Arena, Coventry. The show moved to September in light of measures to curb the coronavirus pandemic.
