SAP WM implementation & sustainable warehouse lift integration at TR Electronic.

Retrofit meets digitalisation – the perfect symbiosis of warehouse logistics and production.

Lack of space on the one hand and empty storage locations on the other. In addition, manual and faulty FiFo, cumbersome booking processes and inefficient transport routes within the factory premises. Growth rarely works without change - and change requires optimisation. Especially when growth is accompanied by structural adjustments to the factory premises. Together with TR Electronic, status C is once again demonstrating how an efficient SAP Warehouse Management (SAP WM) integration can take place and what the multi-order picking of the future could look like.

Project

Industry

Electronics production

Time span

April – October 2023

Achievements

  • Relocation of over 20,000 articles to SAP Warehouse Management (SAP WM)

  • Sustainable integration of 30-year-old warehouse hardware into the "new world"

  • Future-proof customising of ten new Kardex warehouse lifts

  • Efficient production supply through smart multi-order picking

Tradition meets technology: SAP WM introduction at the local hero

TR Electronic is a long-established electronics manufacturing company based in Trossingen, Baden-Württemberg. Founded by its managing director, who is still active today, the company, which specialises in rotary and linear position encoders, has developed over the past 40 years from a small company into a factory with around 400 employees and several external sites. 

With a constantly growing product portfolio, the range of parts also grew - and with it the need for a warehouse management system in order to remain efficient and maintain an overview. Added to this was the new logistics centre at the site, which was built to ensure internal replenishment in smaller call-off quantities for production. In particular, this required the purchase of new warehouse hardware and thus the adaptation of existing processes and the design of new transport routes. The integration of SAP WM was intended to help map and digitalise the intralogistics processes across all halls.

And when it comes to the integration of warehouse management systems, warehouse lifts and mobile scanners, the solutions from status C Connected Warehouse are not far away.

Old treasures, new tricks: 90s storage lifts in digital glory.

The first task was to map the ten Kardex shuttle lifts in the newly introduced SAP WM and to structure them according to fast and slow movers. For this purpose, the new devices were arranged in three groups and connected to the SAP system with status C connect:IT. The LED bar installed in the lift is particularly practical, showing which storage location is to be used for storage or retrieval and in what quantity. Thanks to individual customising, this bar can now also be controlled and tailored to the needs of the employees.

Things got particularly exciting when it came to mapping paternoster lifts that were over 30 years old in SAP WM. With the help of scannable labels at the respective storage location and the use of status C scan:IT, all sleeper stocks could be mapped in the system and even these supposedly outdated devices could be stored and retrieved as usual. Together with TR Electronic, status C developed a customised interface for the other paternoster lifts in the production hall, via which the decades-old warehouse hardware can be controlled using the status C connect:IT lift integration. A sustainable and practical solution that lifts warehouse hardware from the 1990s into the "new world".

Read our blog to find out more about the integration of warehouse lifts into the SAP system landscape and the future of classic SAP Warehouse Management (SAP WM) after 2025.

Warehouse lift integration in SAP
SAP WM after 2025

Dr. Markus Ron Dietrich & Ralf Messner

Technical Manager & Head of IT, TR Electronic

"Working with status C was an outstanding experience. Their expertise and support, especially in training our IT department and implementing the new systems, was critical to the success of our project. We were very impressed by status C's ability to integrate seamlessly into our team and develop solutions together, which contributed to a smooth go-live."

The heart of process optimisation: multi-order picking beyond the limits of the SAP standard.

Smart multi-order picking has been implemented for both the automated warehouses and the manual high-bay warehouses. This is now process-related and – in this way not provided for in the SAP standard - always matches the production order process. The huge advantage of this customising is that material components can now be assigned not only to the order, but also to the physical destination of the provision - i.e. an exact location in production, for example.

How does multi-order picking work?

The process now looks like this:

  • Employees are sent to the respective lift groups with order picking trolleys.

  • Materials are removed from storage.

  • To avoid delays, separate trolleys are formed and bundled in each hall before they are passed through to production.

  • Scanning the trolley then reveals which other parts need to be picked from the manual warehouses.

  • With the help of the identical prioritisation of order components specified in SAP WM and the use of tugger trains, the parts always arrive at the required production location or dispatch at the same time.

This type of software-guided work creates a seamless transition from the warehouse lift integration status C connect:IT to the mobile handheld application status C scan:IT - automated and without time delay. At the same time, the production area is utilised more efficiently as only the material that is required for production is provided. Just-in-time deliveries and a switch from the usual push principle to a modern pull principle illustrate what happens when the status C Connected Warehouse expands its full potential.

  • Kai Puhl

    Consulting & Sales Logistics SAP, status C AG

    "Special mention should be made of the internal IT department, which contributed significantly to the success of the project with its inimitable mindset and inventive spirit. The joint work felt like a team effort and not like a classic service provider-customer relationship."

  • Lars Gerstmann

    Development Logistics SAP, status C AG

    "As my first major project, working with TR Electronic was an exciting experience. The collegial atmosphere and solving problems together showed me how important teamwork and communication are."

It is not a logistics project, it is a people project.

One of the biggest challenges of the migration was the time frame in which the relocation of all article numbers had to be completed. By using barcodes and QR codes, all materials were first systematically recorded and then physically moved from one hall to the other. During this process, the appropriate storage bin size for the material to be stored was determined. The storage transport order was then created. The special feature here was that the palletisation data was stored in the material master as a default setting so that it was automatically displayed as a default value for each subsequent goods receipt.

This automatically defined which of the more than 20,000 article numbers should be stored in which position in future. It helped that all stakeholders in the project had a common understanding of the necessary path and were constantly pulling in the same direction. Only in this way - and thanks to the regular deliveries of up to 60 pizzas per day - was it possible to complete this task in record time.

What followed was an intensive support and training phase, during which employees from status C provided advice and assistance in all areas of the factory. Ralf Messner, Head of IT at TR Electronic, not only provided half the IT team for customising support, but also made his office available as a go-live command centre. This enabled the go-live to be realised efficiently.

Download Success Story (PDF) — English
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