Driverless transport system at Arvato facility
Arvato Supply Chain Solutions continues to advance the automation of its locations. Recently, a driverless transport system (DTS) was introduced to handle all floor-level pallet transport jobs for the healthcare sector at the Harsewinkel (North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany) distribution centre.
The system includes six automated industrial trucks from Jungheinrich that can move around the space freely and deliver around 400 pallets a day to their destinations. Among other things, Arvato uses its Harsewinkel location to provide logistics services for customers in the pharmaceutical and medical technology industries, with 31,000 sqm available for this purpose at the site.
Thanks to their zero-maintenance lithium-ion batteries, the vehicles can run under full load for up to eight hours before they need to be recharged. At the end of the day or once all their jobs have been completed, the vehicles automatically return to their charging stations.
These on-the-fly charging sessions enable the system to work around the clock without having to take special charging breaks. (mw)