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Premium Waters, Inc.
Automated Storage & Retrieval System (AS/RS) and Savanna.NET® WMS Case Study
Premium Waters, Inc. of Minneapolis, MN, a leader in the private label bottled water industry, has installed an Automated Storage and Retrieval Systems (AS/RS) and Savanna.NET® Warehouse Management System (WMS) from Westfalia Technologies, Inc. at their Douglas, GA plant. Premium Waters chose the AS/RS for its technological efficiency and cost benefits, after initially considering a pallet flow system.
Premium Waters, solely owned by the Chesterman Company who has been in the bottling business for over 130 years, bottles water for commercial, residential and retail clients in multiple sizes ranging from single servings to five gallon bottles. The company is also known for bottling public brands, including Chippewa Spring and Premium Kandiyhoi, plus private labels for store and custom label bottled water.
Westfalia designed this high density AS/RS to meet the high throughput rates and provide the most efficient storage configuration. The AS/RS includes two Storage/Retrieval Machines (S/RMs) operating in one aisle, each capable of handling two pallets at a time. Westfalia’s patented Satellite® rack entry vehicle, quickly and smoothly stores and retrieves pallets from the racks. The four-level rack system hold over 6,500 pallet positions in a multiple deep storage design. Pallets are sent from production either into the AS/RS or directly to the shipping dock via Westfalia’s “bridge conveyor.” To handle the peak operations, accumulation conveyors are at both the infeed and discharge of the AS/RS.
Premium Waters is already reaping the benefits of the AS/RS. As Dave Bauereis, Plant Manager explains, “Even though we have only been using the system for a few short months, we have already noticed a marked improvement in safety due to significantly fewer forklifts being used for warehousing. Also, with the push of a button we can obtain an updated accurate full inventory. The system also makes the use of FIFO automatic. It would be very difficult to go back to a manual warehousing system."
System Features:
- AS/RS with 2 Storage Retrieval Machines (S/RM) in one aisle
- 2 pallets handled at a time on each S/RM
- Conveyor System with Air Chain Accumulation Conveyors and unique Drawbridge Conveyor
- Savanna.NET® Warehouse Management System with Order Picking Module
Westfalia's Savanna.NET accurately tracks the inventory and FIFO product shipments. Savanna.NET is a modular WMS software system, and can be adapted to existing or new systems. The tabbed grid view eliminates the need for complicated menus or layers, and is based on acutal objects rather than actions, making hte user interface experience much simpler and more rewarding. Savanna.NET was designed using Microsoft SQL Server 2000 and Version 2.) of the Microsoft .NET framework. It can be readily adapted to all ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) and PLC (Programmable Logic Controller) systems so that all existing technology/hardware and hardware/software interfaces can be fully networked.
“With this AS/RS and Savanna.NET® WMS, Premium Waters will experience 100% inventory accuracy, in addition to significant labor and energy savings. Labor savings come from the fact pallets are automatically conveyed from production to storage, and from storage to the dock, so the only time humans touch the product is when pallets are loaded onto trucks,” describes John Hinchey, Westfalia’s Vice President of Sales.
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