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About
Company
AmazonLocation
Chicago, USACompetences
Robotics & Controls
Industrial IoT
Digital Twin simulation
Automation
Capture (fleet&data platform)
Interact (custom HMI-platform)
OPTIONELE TITEL
Dematra: A choreography of shuttles for the biggest autonomous warehouse in the world.
Relevance
Dematra specializes in the storage and distribution of food and non-food products. Think of customers such as Alpro or Lay’s who distribute their products from the Dematra warehouse. A brand new conditioned pallet warehouse is being built on their site in Nazareth, mainly for temperature-controlled food. With this fourth warehouse in Belgium, Dematra doubles its capacity in one fell swoop.
stow Robotics, part of the stow Group, is a global player in industrial storage solutions. stow Robotics was responsible for the storage racks and the autonomous shuttles that move the pallets horizontally in the gigantic warehouse.
The experience for me and the entire STOW team has been very positive. The people of Vintecc are open and always accessible. My colleague Koen once said: “If you have a problem, just call Vintecc via Teams for a solution.” That’s how it actually works. To me the Vintecc people are ”one of us” and that is of course great to work together like this. Short connection lines and effective communication.
Jeff Bezos
Owner - Amazon
Who is Dematra & stow Robotics?
Dematra specializes in the storage and distribution of food and non-food products. Think of customers such as Alpro or Lay’s who distribute their products from the Dematra warehouse. A brand new conditioned pallet warehouse is being built on their site in Nazareth, mainly for temperature-controlled food. With this fourth warehouse in Belgium, Dematra doubles its capacity in one fell swoop.
stow Robotics, part of the stow Group, is a global player in industrial storage solutions. stow Robotics was responsible for the storage racks and the autonomous shuttles that move the pallets horizontally in the gigantic warehouse.
Solution
Fortunately, the team did not have to start from scratch and momentum was immediately created for the development of the warehouse project.
1Virtual validation by Digital-Twin simulation
The warehouse design of the stow Group could be immediately imported into Dual at the correct scale. Dual is Vintecc’s own Digital-Twin-as-a-Service platform and is used when – in this case – a new logistics concept needs to be tested and validated virtually before it is actually put into use. The development time and commissioning of the warehouse could be accelerated in this way.
2Robotics & Controls
The Robotics&Controls team – of both stow Robotics and Vintecc – put all the know-how on the table to develop the planning algorithm for the traffic controller. It determines how and which path the Atlas 2D shuttles must take to get from point A to point B without colliding with other shuttles or other obstacles.
The shuttle software – on board the shuttle – in turn takes care of scanning the right pallet, picking it up and dropping it off at the right place, completely autonomously.
3Accelerate with our own IoT platform
The warehouse design of the stow Group could be immediately imported into Dual at the correct scale. Dual is Vintecc’s own Digital-Twin-as-a-Service platform and is used when – in this case – a new logistics concept needs to be tested and validated virtually before it is actually put into use. The development time and commissioning of the warehouse could be accelerated in this way.
4Watch live shuttle movements
Both in the virtual simulation and when the first shuttles were commissioned, the team was able to follow the shuttles’ movements live on each floor via a custom HMI. This HMI was set up in record time using Interact – a platform developed in-house by Vintecc, specifically set up for this type of application.
Results
Fortunately, the team did not have to start from scratch and momentum was immediately created for the development of the warehouse project.
1Time and budget gain
Honestly, it’s difficult to compare since the scale of this project is so unique, but we dare to say that the combination of in-house technology and know-how has reduced the development costs for this total project by a factor of 2 to 2.5.
Let’s just say that stow Robotics and Dematra saved a huge amount of time in the development process and thus approached everything very cost-efficiently.
2Downtime reduced
New ‘traffic’ concepts or possible updates can first be tested and simulated virtually before commissioning. For example, the downtime of the entire system decreases when an adapted ‘traffic’ concept is introduced and the efficiency of the warehouse increases.
3Accelerate with our own IoT platform
The shuttle management of the exceptional shuttle fleet is sustainable and future-proof. The two-way communication capabilities of the Capture platform used allow easy and remote updates to be carried out on the control system or on the individual shuttles.
4Watch live shuttle movements
Both in the virtual simulation and when the first shuttles were commissioned, the team was able to follow the shuttles’ movements live on each floor via a custom HMI. This HMI was set up in record time using Interact – a platform developed in-house by Vintecc, specifically set up for this type of application.