w3logistics celebrates successful LEAN project completion
Since 2010, w3logistics AG has regularly participated in research projects in addition to its core business. In cooperation with the University of Duisburg-Essen and other cooperation partners, interesting technologies in logistics have been researched within the scope of the research projects, which are incorporated into the product portfolio and offer direct advantages for the customers.
The "LEAN" research project is one of the ten contributions selected by the MobilityLogistics.NRW lead market competition, which were supported together with around € 9.5 million in EFRE subsidies and around € 3.8 million in co-financing, and which dealt with the development of innovative lightweight storage and retrieval machines based on cable robot technology. The project, which lasted a good three years, was carried out as a cooperation project in which experts from various sectors conducted joint research. In addition to the University of Duisburg-Essen and other companies, w3logistics AG was also involved. The aim of the project was to implement the technological progress gained in rope robotics from the previous projects into new products and applications for the transport and logistics industry.
As part of the project, the Dortmund software house focused primarily on the IT integration of the storage and retrieval machine into the prevailing system landscape, as well as on the development of mobile solutions for operating the machine and the connected warehouse management system. To prove the flexibility of the own logistics suite w3/max. and to develop the system further, were essential aspects for w3logistics to participate in the research project. In addition to new interfaces and optimization strategies, technological progress was achieved in the context of the expansion of the company's own simulator and the development of a web application. With the help of the simulator, the rope robot connection could be simulated and the LVS app to be implemented successfully implemented, which represents a powerful alternative to existing PC clients.
The results of the research project offer w3logistics AG an enormous application potential. The acquired know-how and developed framework represent a real added value and these project results could already be further used in customer projects. In particular, the expansion of the simulator and the created frame work for the web-based LVS app have already been of benefit.
"From our point of view, the participation in the project was a complete success. Thanks to the technological progress, we will be able to present the new features to potential new customers in the logistics suite in the future and thus increase the market potential of w3/max," says Udo Salewski, Head of Development at w3logistics AG.