Live-wire optimisation
Logistics lighthouse projects from three different sectors. This year saw the 38th Zurich Logistics Colloquium staged in the Federal Institute of Technology ETH. Once again, a wide variety of case studies from logistics practice were presented by experts, focusing on crucial issues of optimisation. Organiser Dr Acél repeated his credo, which is that “methodological expertise and lateral thinking may be time-consuming – but they are sustainable.”
The Zurich Logistics Colloquium, held in the lecturers’ foyer of the Federal Institute of Technology ETH in Zurich at the beginning of May, as always, was well attended, with around 70 guests from industry and business present.
The first case study presented at the event concerned the relocation in 2020 of the headquarters of Elektro-Material AG Zurich (EM), a 110-year-old wholesaler from the electrical industry, to a modernised logistics centre.
EM doesn’t have a central warehouse, but rather nine branches, to ensure the greatest possible proximity to its customers. EM developed the logistics centre for the Zurich relocation project with Dr Acél & Partner.
In his remarks Dr Jean Philippe Burkhalter, head of operations (COO) and a member of EM’s executive board, focused on a modified version of a guiding principle of design – ‘shape follows function’. Instead of shape, the design of the new facility followed business processes. 90% of logistics activities are now located on the ground floor.
A high degree of automation additionally increases the efficiency of logistics operations. The project, which ran from 2017 to the end of 2020 and relocated a central small parts warehouse as well as no less than 170 employees over 4 km to the new building, resulted in a timely start of activities at the new location at the beginning of 2021.
Electricity needs logistics too
Dr Maurus Bachmann, managing director of the Swiss Smart Grid Association (VSGS) and Swisseldex, introduced his presentation with the crucial question of whether electricity supply is a logistics task. Although power supply is rarely perceived as such, it is part of a high-end logistics supply system.
What the Swiss electricity grid currently achieves in terms of its logistics performance can be considered exemplary for many other companies. Today, its availability comes to 99.99%.
One of the challenges in electricity supply is the well-known problem of storing electricity. With a view to renewable energies, there is a growing need to store electricity generated seasonally from the sun or wind, for example.
Here a problem of political regulation arises from the abundance of bridging technologies. This hesitation and also a lack of technical expertise make the development of new infrastructure more difficult. Many questions remain unanswered concerning the integration of photovoltaics alone.
Electricity production must be permanently coordinated with consumption, both in terms of location and time. This is a complex task. What general conditions apply to production, how does consumption change, what do the power grids do, what local usage models exist and how can the challenge of seasonal variation in demand to be dealt with? These questions have to be solved because the power supply needs precisely coordinated logistics to provide the right amount and voltage in real time.
According to Dr Bachmann the distribution grid of the future can only be built and the power supply re-tailored and regulated from production to consumption under clear conditions.
Trans-European and Swabian
The third speaker was Wolf-Dieter Tigges, rail operator DB Netz’s head of technology for the unit ‘S-Bahn Frankfurt-Friedberg / Gateway Gardens’, who presented a major waste logistics project executed in the context of Stuttgart 21. The Stuttgart 21 hub of the Stuttgart–Ulm rail project aims to expand the trans-European network on the central west-east axis, and also optimise freight transport.
How to dispose of the excavated material may initially appear to be a mere detail of the gigantic project to convert Stuttgart’s main railway station into an underground station. In the middle of the city, there were very demanding requirements concerning the effects of noise, vibration, dust, dirt and artificial light.
Tigges described the construction of a new construction road system that did not interfere with public road traffic, amongst many other things. 98% of all disposals are executed by rail and road, and the volumes transported can be controlled precisely thanks to an electronic waste-tracking system.
Emissions have been minimised by new technologies. You can’t break new ground without innovating – in the course of the project, a new container that can be used intermodally was developed, together with Schmitz Cargobull, Tigges said.
The meeting, which has been “a fixture at ETH” for 40 years, says Professor Wegener, ended in a lively exchange between experts in sun-drenched Zurich.