Gehl Foods Inc., Germantown, Wis., has selected York, Pa.-based Westfalia Technologies Inc. to design, build and install a high-density automated storage and retrieval system with Savanna.NET Warehouse Management Software in the company’s 300,000-square-foot warehouse.
The building’s height clearance of just over 22 feet is a critical factor in the design. The AS/RS and WMS will maximize Gehl Food’s storage space and provide significant operational savings in labor costs, energy and more.
A leader in the manufacture of quality dairy products for over a century, Gehl Foods began as a three-room dairy in 1896 with the commitment to make new and better dairy products. By the 1950s, Gehl’s was a popular household brand in the delivery of milk and dairy ingredients. Since then, Gehl’s has traded its regional delivery business for new technology to produce sterile, non-refrigerated dairy products.
Its leading efforts in sterile packaging have created a new category in foodservice: direct-from-the-pouch sauces, shelf-stable weight loss shakes and iced coffee beverages. Among their most popular products are puddings, iced lattes, and cheese sauces served from their patented Hot Top 2 dispenser in over 300,000 locations in North America.
\The multi-aisle AS/RS design to be installed at Gehl Foods is based on Westfalia’s multiple deep Satellite technology, which provides the ability to create a compact, 6- and 8-pallet deep storage solution. Storing pallets three levels high in the high-density, non-rack supported building configuration minimizes construction and operating costs. Included in the AS/RS are conveyors, storage retrieval machines, Satellite rack entry vehicles and WMS interfaces. Westfalia’s fourth generation SRM design provides faster operation and longer life. Due to its sophisticated double mast structural design, it is one of the heaviest-duty SRMs available today.
Westfalia’s Savanna.NET WMS will track all pallets throughout the system, streamlining flow for fast and accurate order management. Specifically, Savanna’s functionality for Gehl’s will include material flow control, order management, reports, logging and interfacing to Gehl’s host ERP system.
To be built in two phases, the Gehl’s Foods AS/RS is expected to be completed in the spring of 2011.
Visit www.WestfaliaUSA.com(click industry solutions) to learn more about AS/RS and WMS installations.
