Is it best to outsource logistics or keep them in-house? This question is probably addressed by all manufacturing companies at a certain point in their development. Alpenhain Käsespezialitätenwerk GmbH & Co. KG decided to set up a fully automated finished goods warehouse with two cooling zones and a cooling tunnel. This was launched in February 2009.

Finished products from several production zones are stored here. The external warehouse management system controls the administration and allocation of storage space, including GUS-OS ERP messaging, as well as materials handling equipment and the printing of EAN 128 labels for shipping pallets.

GUS-OS ERP enables automatic monitoring of the stock level in the cooling tunnel and its transfer to the high rack storage area, and it also regulates the storage of such products in the finished goods warehouse, the management of orders and availability checks, as well as reservation, picking, outsourcing and shipping.

A "master/slave principle" has been realized for communication between the ERP system and the warehouse management system, whereby the ERP solution is the "master" and the warehouse management system is the "slave". The WMS has been implemented as the executing system in order to avoid interfaces and data redundancies between the two systems. All relevant activities in the warehouse are promptly reported back to the ERP system. The transmission of data between the WMS and GUS-OS ERP is enabled via TCP/IP connections.

Fully automatic control of the order processing system enables Alpenhain to ensure faster and more accurate control of their logistics processes. "The supply and control of the warehouse is watertight thanks to GUS-OS ERP. We have definitely made a worthwhile choice by opting for this solution", states Johannes Urban, Head of Organization and EDP for Alpenhain Käsespezialitäten GmbH & Co. KG.

(eNEWS 05/2010, 27.05.2010, Picture: Alpenhain)