Download PDF
Primium Waters Inc. invests in technological efficiency
Technology Category
- Automation & Control - Automation & Process Control Systems
- Functional Applications - Remote Monitoring & Control Systems
- Functional Applications - Warehouse Management Systems (WMS)
Applicable Industries
- Consumer Goods
- Food & Beverage
Applicable Functions
- Logistics & Transportation
- Warehouse & Inventory Management
Use Cases
- Inventory Management
- Supply Chain Visibility
- Warehouse Automation
Services
- Software Design & Engineering Services
- System Integration
The Challenge
Premium Waters, Inc. of Minneapolis, MN, a leader in the private label bottled water industry, faced the challenge of meeting increasing demand and throughput. They needed a solution that could handle high throughput rates and provide efficient storage configuration. Initially considering a pallet flow system, they ultimately chose an Automated Storage and Retrieval Systems (AS/RS) and Savanna.NET® Warehouse Management System (WMS) from Westfalia Technologies, Inc. The new system was installed at their Douglas, GA plant to convey products from palletizing, through high-density storage, to outbound staging lanes on the shipping dock. The AS/RS includes two Storage/Retrieval Machines (S/RMs) operating in one aisle, each capable of handling two pallets at a time, which is a key advantage of Westfalia’s flexible high-density warehouse designs.
About The Customer
Premium Waters, solely owned by the Chesterman Company, has been in the bottling business for over 130 years. They bottle water for commercial, residential, and retail clients in multiple sizes ranging from single servings to five-gallon bottles. The company is also known for bottling public brands, including Chippewa Spring and Premium Kandiyohi, as well as private labels for store and custom label bottled water. Premium Waters is a leader in the private label bottled water industry and has a strong reputation for quality and reliability. Their operations span multiple locations, and they are committed to technological efficiency and cost benefits.
The Solution
To handle peak production and order selection times, Premium Waters installed Air Chain Accumulation Conveyors at both the infeed and discharge of the AS/RS. These conveyors provide a buffer for smoothing peak operations and cut the average S/RM travel distance. Pallets of bottled water are sent from production either into the AS/RS or directly to the shipping dock via Westfalia’s unique Drawbridge Conveyor. The Drawbridge Conveyor either lays across the crane aisle for pallets to travel directly to the shipping dock or lifts straight up for the S/RM to move through the aisle. Once pallets are stretch-wrapped and labeled, they enter the automated system. Each pallet is conveyed to a squaring station, where it is centered on the conveyor, profile checked, and scanned for identification. If a pallet load is outside the predefined load envelope or can’t be scanned, it will be rejected and require forklift removal and correction. Pallets that pass the profile check and scanning station are conveyed to the infeed of either S/RM 1 or S/RM 2 and are placed in the storage rack as directed by Westfalia’s Savanna.NET® Warehouse Management System.
Operational Impact
Quantitative Benefit
Related Case Studies.
.png)
Case Study
Improving Vending Machine Profitability with the Internet of Things (IoT)
The vending industry is undergoing a sea change, taking advantage of new technologies to go beyond just delivering snacks to creating a new retail location. Intelligent vending machines can be found in many public locations as well as company facilities, selling different types of goods and services, including even computer accessories, gold bars, tickets, and office supplies. With increasing sophistication, they may also provide time- and location-based data pertaining to sales, inventory, and customer preferences. But at the end of the day, vending machine operators know greater profitability is driven by higher sales and lower operating costs.
Case Study
The Kellogg Company
Kellogg keeps a close eye on its trade spend, analyzing large volumes of data and running complex simulations to predict which promotional activities will be the most effective. Kellogg needed to decrease the trade spend but its traditional relational database on premises could not keep up with the pace of demand.
Case Study
HEINEKEN Uses the Cloud to Reach 10.5 Million Consumers
For 2012 campaign, the Bond promotion, it planned to launch the campaign at the same time everywhere on the planet. That created unprecedented challenges for HEINEKEN—nowhere more so than in its technology operation. The primary digital content for the campaign was a 100-megabyte movie that had to play flawlessly for millions of viewers worldwide. After all, Bond never fails. No one was going to tolerate a technology failure that might bruise his brand.Previously, HEINEKEN had supported digital media at its outsourced datacenter. But that datacenter lacked the computing resources HEINEKEN needed, and building them—especially to support peak traffic that would total millions of simultaneous hits—would have been both time-consuming and expensive. Nor would it have provided the geographic reach that HEINEKEN needed to minimize latency worldwide.
Case Study
Energy Management System at Sugar Industry
The company wanted to use the information from the system to claim under the renewable energy certificate scheme. The benefit to the company under the renewable energy certificates is Rs 75 million a year. To enable the above, an end-to-end solution for load monitoring, consumption monitoring, online data monitoring, automatic meter data acquisition which can be exported to SAP and other applications is required.
Case Study
Coca Cola Swaziland Conco Case Study
Coco Cola Swaziland, South Africa would like to find a solution that would enable the following results: - Reduce energy consumption by 20% in one year. - Formulate a series of strategic initiatives that would enlist the commitment of corporate management and create employee awareness while helping meet departmental targets and investing in tools that assist with energy management. - Formulate a series of tactical initiatives that would optimize energy usage on the shop floor. These would include charging forklifts and running cold rooms only during off-peak periods, running the dust extractors only during working hours and basing lights and air-conditioning on someone’s presence. - Increase visibility into the factory and other processes. - Enable limited, non-intrusive control functions for certain processes.
