Vereinigte Verlagsauslieferung (VVA), a part of Arvato, has modernized its 40-year-old high-bay pallet warehouse in Gütersloh-without interrupting operations. The comprehensive upgrade, completed in under a year with Stöcklin Logistik AG, enhances performance while reducing energy consumption and maintenance costs.
Complete modernization of the over 40-year-old pallet high-bay warehouse due to signs of fatigue
Replacement of the complete old storage and retrieval system and Installation of the latest systems for the 14-aisle, 34 m high pallet high-bay warehouse
20 % more power, 30 % less energy, faster repairs and better operational readiness thanks to networked camera surveillance - without new construction
Replacement of the fourteen 16-ton storage and retrieval units over the hall roof - work with heavy-duty crane to the centimeter, while bearing and forwarding operations continued
In order to continue shipping over 100 million books a year in a sustainable, future-proof and efficient manner, Vereinigte Verlagsauslieferung (VVA), part of Arvato, has fundamentally modernized its forty-year-old high-bay pallet warehouse at the Gütersloh site in less than a year. This storage facility alone holds 60,000 euro pallets and stores and retrieves around 2,500 pallets on average every day.
The world's largest fully automated storage facility in the 1970s - still the core system of its Westphalian logistics center today - was to be equipped for the coming decades through intelligent investment in the latest, energy-efficient plant and control technology. Despite the challenges, the modernization was completed on schedule, without interruptions, and with flexible adaptations based on customer needs.
At the beginning of 2023, Arvato decided in favor of intralogistics engineering and implementation expertise from Stöcklin. From March 2023 to January 2024, three aisles each were equipped with new drive rails and 14 high-performance Stöcklin MASTer42 RBG within nine weeks during ongoing operations.
The solution involved dismantling the disused stacker cranes, each of which was 34 meters high and weighed 16 tons, in the hall and removing them through the open roof using a heavy-duty crane - and bringing the new devices through the roof into the bearing, component by component, in order to assemble them there.
Many years of retrofit expertise, the partnership-based cooperation of all parties involved and a high degree of in-house production by Stöcklin at its engineering center in Laufen (CH) were the basis for successfully overcoming all difficulties. The total modernization phase ran without interruption and with customer adjustments during the construction phase.
With new rack operation, 20 percent more storage and retrieval capacity is possible in the high-bay warehouse with 60,000 pallet spaces. Thanks to intelligent DC link coupling (which makes electricity generated from braking energy directly available to other Drive units) and a newly developed sinusoidal energy recovery system, more than 12 percent energy can now be fed back into the grid and a total of 30 percent energy can be saved. Cameras on the stacker cranes now enable visually supported operational monitoring and accelerated fault clearance in the event of a problem.
