Warehouse Automation with AS/RS integration for Reserve Bank of India subsidiary BRBNMPL Currency Printing Press

12,500 pallets capacity offering flexibility to store Raw Material and Paper

10 high double deep racking system

5 Aisles in ASRS for pallets system and each Aisle has one stacker crane to serve pallets and 5th aisle has no stacker crane but it is deployed using a transfer car

Throughput of 40 pallets/hour

The conveyors are used for both storage and retrieval process

Barcode station is available to generate the barcodes for the pallets received

2 barcode scanning stations available to scan the pallets to validate

Weighing station available to validate the weight of the inventory

SIERRA’s WMCentral – Warehouse Management System (WMS) takes care of the inventory management needs of Warehouses covering the entire operations of the warehouse and helps in automating the same. The system allows automatic stack allocations for the incoming inventory, prints the barcode labels for easy/accurate identification, checks the positions of items once stacked, displays the positions automatically while issuing and provides for stock-taking features for periodic checking of inventory. Adequate reports are available for transaction tracking and there is also a visual display for AS/RS equipments live status tracking. This WMCentral solution was customized to meet BRBNMPL’s requirements and tender specifications in record time

Application Components:

Warehouse Operation, Warehouse Control System (WCS), Programmable Logic Controllers (PLC) Operation

The Warehouse Control System (WCS) was developed to achieve the following hardware integrations:

The MOXA NPort serial communication device was used to communicate to the conveyor PLCs. The crane and transfer crane PLC communication cannot be through hardwiring owing to the movement during operation and so it was managed by communicating through Infrared Optical Sensors (IR Sensing) connected to the NPort device. The TCP/IP communication was used to communicate to the automation scanners, and weighing machines.

The Storage Process:

On placing an incoming pallet in the weighing machine, the WCS system collects the weight of the pallets by integrating with the weighing machines. The barcode labels are printed and stuck on the pallets and moved to the incoming conveyor. The WCS reads the pallet id of the pallet placed in the conveyor with the help of the automation scanner that reads the barcode label. The WCS communicates the same to the WMS and gets the storage location. The WCS then sends the movement commands to the conveyor PLC to move the conveyor and on reaching the storage area, the WCS sends the commands to the Crane PLCs via the IR communication sensor to place the pallet at a logically planned stack location.

The Retrieval Process:

On receiving inventory requests, the warehouse operator makes an issue entry in the WMS system. The WMS system sends the retrieval request to the WCS System The WCS system activates the respective aisle crane to pick up the required pallet and then place it on the crane. The automation scanner reads the barcode to validate the correctness of the pallet and then the conveyor is operated to move the pallet for issuing for production by the WCS system. On a successful issue, it gets updated in the WMS system.

BRBNMPL also uses this system to store tools & spares apart from the raw materials and the system has options to do the transfer of pallets from one stack location to another etc.

The purpose of the transfer crane is to shift the crane from one aisle to another aisle

Omron supplied the latest PLC’s, the IT hardware was procured from DELL and the networking & other IT/communication infrastructure work was directly handled by SIERRA.

SIERRA took care of the Project Management Control of the entire project and ensured that the project was successfully commissioned

Complete peripherals are on the latest technologies

Windows OS and latest software applications ensuring that it doesn’t get obsolete for another decade or two

Graphical view of conveyer and aisle storage with drill-down options

Robust and automatic backups in the backup server and tape drive

Comprehensive solution allowing various mode of operation – Auto, Manual, Emergency with Reset & Refresh features