During our visit to Krone to see what the company would launch at Agritechnica, we were also given the opportunity to explore its new parts warehouse, which opened back in April.
Opened in Spelle, near the company headquarters, the 45m euro investment, the warehouse covers 72,000sq m and has a capacity of 65,000 parts – equivalent to 2,100 lorry loads. The incoming and outgoing area covers 7,865sq m, with each item being scanned upon delivery and automatically assigned.
High-bay storage has enough storage space for 21,600 euro pallets, with 21% of all dispatched parts coming from this area. It’s 25m high and 155m long, with three rack aisles with retrieval devices.
An under-pallet carrier system is used to connect this area to order picking, with ten robots working.
72% of parts will come from the AutoStore system, which can hold 51,000 containers with 15 robots automatically organising and picking containers. The system is self-learning, meaning that as demand increases for certain parts, the robots will start to move those containers closer to the picking area.
The robots will also work together, so that if a container is at the bottom of the system, multiple units will move containers to enable it to be accessed quickly. According to Krone, the maximum picking time from the AutoStore is just two minutes.
For the largest parts, an 8,652sq m cold store is utilised. This area is handled manually, but makes up just 7% of all deliveries, meaning the vast majority will be handled automatically.
To limit the environmental impact of the warehouse, 8,000sq m of solar panels are mounted on the roof.