Jungheinrich automates worldwide spare parts logistics for Liebherr

Liebherr-Werke Ehingen GmbH is building a new central spare parts warehouse at its headquarters in Ehingen, Baden-Württemberg, Germany with the assistance of Jungheinrich. As one of the leading global manufacturers of mobile cranes, Liebherr intends to handle its worldwide distribution of spare parts from June 2023 onwards from the new facility.

At the heart of the logistics solution, which Jungheinrich is delivering as single provider, is an automated six-aisle high-bay warehouse (HBW) for pallets in a rack-supported structure with 18,000 rack storage locations – including in the roof and wall panelling. At 80m long, 75m wide with a height of 30m, its dimensions are impressive. In addition, it has a two-aisle, three-fold-deep automated miniload shuttle warehouse (MSW) with rack storage locations for a total of 40,000 containers.

These two warehouse types will ensure the maximum use of space for Liebherr’s distribution of spare parts while, at the same time, improving handling performance. By putting the warehouse into operation, the company wants to set new standards in regards to quality, functionality and safety and ensure the consistently high availability of its machinery around the world.

The product range of the Liebherr plant in Ehingen includes state-of-the-art telescopic and lattice boom cranes of different sizes, both mobile and on continuous tracks: the scope spans from all-terrain mobiles cranes of 35t to gigantic crawler cranes with load capacities of 3000t.

In addition to the HBW and MSW racking systems and the latest conveyor systems for containers and pallets – including control units and visualisation – the system solution, which Jungheinrich developed as a general contractor for the Liebherr plant in Ehingen, also includes six stacker cranes for pallets from the Jungheinrich subsidiary MIAS. Each of these is outfitted with dual load handling equipment to ensure the fast pace of the stacking and picking of Liebherr spare parts in thoroughly automated processes as well as smooth operations around the clock.

In dialogue with the ERP system of Liebherr, Jungheinrich Warehouse Management System (WMS) will take over the control of not only the automated facility but of all other processes of the surrounding manual areas of the warehouse. All functions and solutions are tailored precisely according to the requirements of Liebherr. Among other things, this includes the pre-commissioning of containers in multi-order mode with pick-by/put-to-light and the subsequent consolidation as part of the order picking of pallets. Additional pick-and-pack order picking in shipping boxes is also carried out. This happens at the same place of the container pre-commissioning as well as at a further workplace where orders of both pallets and containers in shipping boxes are picked. The goal: enabling the Liebherr plant in Ehingen to reach the highest efficiency and maximum transparency of all intralogistics tasks of its central distribution of spare parts.

Jungheinrich project manager Robert Schad says, “The logistics solution that we have developed for Liebherr stands out in particular due to its high flexibility. It can be expanded without difficulty and is, therefore, already equipped for the future growth of spare parts operations. Here, Jungheinrich is the sole source for planning, project design and construction.”