Warehouse Management System

In contrast to the handling of standard warehouses like high-rack facilities or stockyards of palettes, the management and control of a warehouse in the steel industry is a much more complex task.

In fact, a suitable storage location must be determined for each item individually depending on its actual geometrical structure, its surface characteristics and the plant's superior material flow. The capacity of a storage location can change dynamically depending on the physical allocation of other storage locations beside or even beneath it.

The Warehouse Management System has evolved since 1999 and is now widely installed in major global steel companies such as ThyssenKrupp Steel and Salzgitter.

Besides well-proven and stable software functionality, the Warehouse Management System puts a strong focus on system performance and easy-handling features for supporting the operators. One of the core features is a 3D graphical representation, which allows an intuitive interaction between the operator and the system. On cranes, the system provides visualization updates every single second.

Figure 1: Typical freehand navigation view (Shop Floor Operation) on a coil yard with railway wagons and context sensitive help.

Figure 2: Typical freehand navigation view (Shop Floor Operation) of a slab yard system with roller table and context sensitive menu. Roller table allocation is visualisation based on roller table's material tracking system data.

Figure 3: Typical crane driver view on a coil yard with a transport job list and direction indicator. Angle of view is changing depending on crane sensor data (position). Different coil characteristics can be represented by different parameterisable colours.

Figure 4: Typical crane driver view in a slab yard system with transport job list and direction indicator. Angle of view is changing depending on crane sensor data (position). Different slab characteristics can be represented by different parameterisable colours.