A warehouse with nearly 10,000 component types has a different problem from one holding a few high-volume SKUs.
The difficulty is not only fitting everything into the building. Production still needs the right material to come back out quickly and accurately.
This precision manufacturer develops electrical connectors, connector assemblies and electromechanical products for rail transit, communications, industrial equipment, wind power, electric vehicles and other applications.
For its new factory, the warehouse needed to support more than 9,700 types of automotive components, with daily inbound activity reaching 370 SKUs and outbound demand peaking at 872 SKUs.
That combination of high SKU variety and frequent production supply made a single storage architecture a poor fit.
Why the Project Uses Two AS/RS systems
Palletized materials and small components behave differently in storage.
The final design therefore combines a Pallet Stacker Crane AS/RS for pallet loads with a Tote Four-Way Shuttle AS/RS for high-SKU small parts.
Together, the two systems provide more than 18,700 storage locations.
The pallet area is arranged across 14 levels and served by 2 Pallet Stacker Cranes.
The tote area reaches 22.3 meters height and 51 levels, with 8 Tote Four-Way Shuttle Robots operating inside the rack system.
The wider project also includes 4 RGVs, a level-changing lifter, high-speed Tote Lifters, conveying equipment, WMS/WCS and the 3D Visualization Central Control System.
The point was not to make every part of the warehouse equally dense. It was to give palletized and tote-based materials the handling logic that suited them.
The Tote System Handles the High-SKU Pressure
The tote warehouse carries much of the SKU complexity.
The Tote Four-Way Shuttle Robots move along both main and sub-aisle directions inside the rack system. With a level-changing lifter, shuttle robots can also be moved between storage levels.
This gives WCS more freedom when workload shifts.
If one area receives more outbound tasks while another becomes quiet, available robots can be reassigned instead of remaining tied to a single aisle.
The tote system supports approximately 323 totes per hour for inbound and outbound handling.
For a warehouse serving thousands of component types, that shared robot capacity is more useful than looking at the speed of one shuttle in isolation.
Storage and Production Work as One Flow
The automated logistics system connects storage and production across Floors 1 to 4.
On the pallet side, Pallet Stacker Cranes handle storage and retrieval while RGVs transfer pallets at the warehouse front end.
On the tote side, Tote Lifters and conveyors move retrieved materials toward picking and production areas.
Goods-to-person picking reduces the need for operators to walk through storage locations searching for individual components. Required totes are retrieved according to task demand and sent toward the picking process.
WMS manages inventory, locations and order requirements, while WCS coordinates the Pallet Stacker Cranes, Tote Four-Way Shuttle Robots, RGVs, lifters and conveyors.
WMS can also integrate with ERP/MES through API interfaces, while the 3D Visualization Central Control System provides a visual view of warehouse, logistics and equipment status.
Key Project Figures
The completed project includes and supports:
18,700+ storage locations
9,700+ automotive component types
22.3 m / 51-level Tote Four-Way Shuttle AS/RS
8 Tote Four-Way Shuttle Robots
2 Pallet Stacker Cranes
4 RGVs
approximately 323 totes/hour
inbound peak of 370 SKUs/day
outbound peak of 872 SKUs/day
The project reports that space utilization reached about 10 times the previous flat-storage level, while warehouse turnover efficiency improved by around 200%.
What makes the project useful for other manufacturers is not one individual machine.
The pallet side, tote side, vertical transfer and software follow different material flows but operate as one warehouse.
For high-SKU manufacturing, high-density storage works best when retrieval, picking and production supply can keep pace with it.
