Streck Transport Group

Efficient warehouse management software for Streck Transport Group: SuPCIS-L8 case study

The Streck Transport Group is a medium-sized forwarding and logistics service provider with a large number of locations in Germany and Switzerland. Streck Transport provides the entire range of forwarding and logistics services. Long-standing cooperations such as with System Alliance, System Alliance Europe, SystemPlus or also with DPD form the basis for nationwide services.

The Möhlin location in the canton of Aargau is the largest branch of the company group in Switzerland. From here, customers in Switzerland, Europe and all over the world have been served since 1977.

At the Möhlin site, the available storage space was expanded in 2008 by a new building. A total of around 17,000 pallet spaces are now available in two physically separate halls, plus various block storage areas and sufficient space for incoming and outgoing goods. Manually operated narrow-aisle stackers are used in the high-bay warehouses. The transports on the area, the supply and disposal of the high-bay warehouses and the operation of the block warehouses are carried out by front stackers.

The distribution of the load carriers to the shipping bins is supported by an underfloor drag chain conveyor. As part of the expansion, the existing warehouse management system was replaced by the modern SuPCIS-L8 warehouse management system from S&P Computersysteme GmbH. The warehouse management system (WMS) runs on a redundant server cluster in the central data center of the Streck Transport Group in Freiburg. The desktop clients at the Swiss location Möhlin are connected via the intranet using Citrix. The used radio data terminals, running the Java frontend with graphical user interface developed by S&P, communicate directly via XML with the LVS server.

As a logistics service provider, the Streck Transport Group serves many clients from a wide range of industries, from food to automotive. The requirements for process support by the warehouse management system are correspondingly demanding. Client-dependent dialogs and corresponding mandatory fields such as batch, production date, best before date, etc. are called up. This significantly simplifies the work in goods receipt. If open requirements are known in the system, employees can use the mobile terminal to serve shipping directly via a bypass function. The necessary documents can be retrieved on request via the mobile terminal in a client-specific manner.

The requirement for intelligent and efficient control of the vehicles in use was met by the forklift guidance system integrated in SuPCIS-L8. Route optimization, individual aisle occupancy strategies with corresponding aisle blocks for different vehicle types with dynamic traffic control guarantee the smooth running of the warehouse. The warehouse control center can track every movement in real time.

A continuous dialog-guided, transparent solution was developed from all warehouse areas for picking the differently procured warehouse goods. When picking outside the aisle, a restocking order for the remaining quantity on the load carrier is automatically generated by the WMS. The control takes place via a special indicator in the article master.

As a provider of logistics services, the requirements for an individual, yet automatic calculation of the services provided were high. The flexibility to use individual logistical operations as the service type for the calculation basis enables client-specific logistics accounting.

The project was intensively supported by the project management team of the Streck Transport Group. A sophisticated test plan was drawn up and executed. At the end of February 2009, the WMS was commissioned and the trial operation was subsequently released in several stages parallel to ongoing operations. Further logistics locations of the Streck Transport Group in Germany will follow.