Swisslog, a leading global provider of intralogistics automation solutions, said it is making big strides with the SAP EWM warehouse management system alongside its own SynQ software platform.

The company recently secured three global projects with a combined value of over €17 million ($19.02 million), and a significant element of these involves SAP EWM integration, said a statement from the company.

These orders were placed by Festo, an automation technology specialist from Germany to build a new, state-of-the-art logistics hub in Shanghai; Aqipa, a consumer electronics distributor from Austria who will use SAP EWM to control its AutoStore facility near Innsbruck; and Bühler, a Swiss technology company for its new Customer Service Hub in Switzerland, it said.

All three cases call for a combination of the AutoStore compact storage system and SAP EWM. This will allow Swisslog to further cement its position as the world’s number-one AutoStore provider.

Alain Kaddoum, general manager of Swisslog Middle East, said: “We are delighted that our development of the standard AutoStore concept with SAP EWM offers real added value for our customers.”

“The orders we have secured will allow us to demonstrate our SAP expertise in the market even further,” he added.

AutoStore is an automated storage and retrieval system, which uses radio-controlled, battery-powered robots who move along a grid on top of stacks of bins. The robots lift bins from the stacks and deliver them to the operator at the picking station, after which the robot returns the bin to storage.

AutoStore is a giant leap toward making supply chain management more efficient as it offers a 50% increase in picking speed, a 60 per cent reduction in inventory storage footprint and a 90 per cent improvement in picking errors over non-automated distribution centres.

SAP EWM is a highly standardized and efficient warehouse management system for manual and automated warehouse solutions with material flow functionality that allows the direct connection of PLC-level controls.

The high level of standardisation minimises risk of error and failure rates in daily operations, resulting in a high degree of employee satisfaction and ensuring maximum throughput.

Kaddoum said: “At our company, we are dedicated to finding the most innovative solutions in logistics automation to improve our customers’ operations. Our solutions have provided our customers with significant improvements in logistics enabling optimal usage of the same space.”

In the Middle East, Swisslog has deployed its automated logistics solutions across multiple sectors including e-commerce, retail, food and beverage. Till date, the company has signed a total of seven large-scale projects in the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait with a value of over $100 million, it stated. – TradeArabia News Service