A Super Dry Totech development for a major OEM reduces the steps between receiving components and getting them to storage.
The challenge of checking and controlling incoming inventory can be a labor and space intensive activity. Allocating goods to stock rooms, intermediate storage and set up areas can mean transporting components over long distances around the factory costing time, creating additional loading and unloading processes and ultimately a potential for production bottlenecks.
This was the challenge faced by a major OEM user of the centralised component storage system, the Dry Tower. Working in cooperation with the customer, efficiencies have now been greatly improved with the development of the new `MT 01` component trolley used to store and unload component reels.
Reels are scanned and manually placed directly into the ‘MT 01’ trolley at goods-in. Loading is quick and easy as it accepts up to 50 reels in any sequence, regardless of diameter or thickness. It then temporarily stores the component reels until it is wheeled to the Dry Tower docking station where it automatically unloads them into the Dry Tower centralised storage system for scheduling into production. The trolley is approx. 500 mm x 500 mm and just under 1 meter high and is powered by a rechargeable battery pack for mobile operation.
The company’s CEO, Jos Brehler, commented, “This is yet another significant addition to our Dry Tower storage solution, delivering more flexibility and options to our customers on how they choose to organise their logistics. Our Dry Tower component storage solution sits at the heart of smart factory principles and incorporates the latest thinking in Industry 4.0 and LEAN manufacturing techniques.”
The `MT01` was released for the first time at SMT Hybrid Packaging where a full working demonstration of the Dry Tower automatic storage system was also shown.
