THE COMPANY AND THE PROJECT
Grupo Herdez is one of the leading companies in the food industry in Mexico, with a major international presence in the USA and Canada.
Today Herdez enjoys great national and international prestige due to the high quality of its products combined with the experience that comes from over 90 years in the market Grupo Herdez produces and markets more than 600 products under different brand names with high visibility in the markets in which it operates. Among the most important brands in the portfolio of Grupo Herdez, the following are among the most well-known: Herdez, Del Fuerte, McCormick, Barilla, Yemina, Vesta, Nair, Embasa, La Victoria, Buffalo, La Gloria, Charlotte, Crest, and Hormel.
Problems and objectives
Herdez’s main requirement was to create a modern and technologically advanced logistics site to serve Mexico City and the neighboring states.
They therefore decided to equip the new production site with a storage warehouse that would ensure high storage capacity and efficient management. Grupo Herdez chose to partner with System Logistics because its picking systems perfectly suit the Herdez SKU profile with an easy and balanced solution.
THE SOLUTION AND THE RESULTS
The warehouse designed by System Logistics is dedicated to finished product storage in an automatic vertical warehouse
with a capacity of 37,440 pallet slots. The loading units are 39 x 47 in CHEP pallets. The Automatic Vertical Warehouse is composed of four 112 ft high bi-pallet two-column stacker cranes that slide along an aisle 590 ft long. Maximum capacity is 2,645 lbs per loading unit. The products coming from the outside and directly from production enter the warehouse through 4 bays. The products exit the warehouse through 7 pairs of bays served by 10 SVL (System Vehicle Loop) shuttle vehicles. The total flows in this configuration are 90 incoming and 150 outgoing pallets an hour. As well as storing the finished product for the shipment of entire pallets, the warehouse is used to restock the adjacent picking area by means of the SVL system.
The picking concept applied to this system is the Pick to Pallet System (PPS). The area dedicated to the PPS consists of a pallet warehouse with a capacity of 1,100 loading units and two single-depth aisles. The picking warehouse is served by two 33 ft high stacker cranes, model NV. The warehouse is connected to the main SVL by means of an elevator. The picking warehouse is situated within an SVL with 8 shuttles that deposit the source pallets on idle roller conveyors to perform the picking activities in the 5 pairs of bays. The 180 Class A references are handled to the sides of the picking area, deposited on gravity roller conveyors with two pallet slots and fed by rectilinear shuttles. The 90 Class B and 450 Class C references are handled in the picking warehouse and can always count on the presence of one entire pallet in the warehouse and one pallet picked up and placed on the idle roller conveyors. For the Class B references, the pallet that is picked up is stored in non-motorized stalls on the first shelving level. This way, the picking operations for Class B references involve only the SVL, thus reducing the work of the stacker cranes. The operator carries out the picking activities using a commissioning trolley on which he prepares the pallets guided by a radio frequency system. After completing the pallet using the main SVL, it is sent to the main warehouse which acts as a meeting point pending shipment. The system designed and constructed by System Logistics is capable of handling a flow of more than 4000 crates an hour for a peak of 65,000 crates a day and requires a workforce of only 15-20 people.
This simple and low-cost solution allows the low, medium and high movement references to be concentrated in one area, thus merging the advantages of “man to goods” with “goods to man” solutions.
