SUS Corporation
SUS achieves higher productivity with AS/RS, Mobile Rack and AGVs.
SUS Corporation manufactures and sells machined aluminum products for houses, buildings, and furniture. The company’s aluminum frames are manufactured completely in-house, from material purchasing and extruding to the processing of raw aluminum billet material.
In March 2008, SUS opened the Shiga Plant, its fourth production site within Japan. The facility strengthened the company’s production capacity and enhanced the supply of product for major customers near the facility via reduced delivery time and distribution costs.
The new Shiga Plant features material handling systems including a unit load Automated Storage & Retrieval System (AS/RS), a mobile rack, a digital picking system, and Automated Guided Vehicles (AGVs). By streamlining the plant’s distribution operations and creating an efficient production system, output of aluminum frames increased by 30% to reach 130 tons per month.
Challenges
- Reorganizing the complicated intralogistics
- Carry out through FIFO control
Results
- Productivity improvement resulted in shorter lead time
- Strict FIFO control established
- Storage capacity increased by 30%
AS/RS has one storage retrieval machine and 123 pallet locations for aluminum and plastic panels. Panels are picked from two retrieval stations provided at the rack side and transferred to the cutting machine. According to the production schedule, aluminum frames are retrieved from the mobile rack and placed in temporary storage before being cut to fill orders.
Mobile Rack for 4m-long aluminum bars.
New factory covers 230 SKU aluminum frames, 150 SKU panels and 2000 SKU other components.
Customer's Voice
Hiroshi Iwase
Factory Manager
Our first AS/RS streamlined not only each process but also the whole plant. The automated system allowed us to realize labor and space savings within a safe work environment. We will strive for higher production quality and customer satisfaction throughout the company based on this model project.
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