Testing and Upgrades of the Warehouse MFCS System Software Scheme in Connection with SAP

The success of a company depends to a large extent on quality inventory management and storage. More and more companies are opting for warehouse automation. With good information technology, we achieve full traceability of materials, whilst at the same time reducing operating costs through optimisation of warehouse processes. For greater transparency and more organised storage of goods, racking systems are mostly used, which are serviced with the help of forklifts or stacker cranes. Because the path to an order is long, there is often not enough time for detailed testing of systems, whilst on the other hand the customer cannot assess the performance of the system until it is in use.

Problem

The success of a company depends to a large extent on quality inventory management and storage. More and more companies are opting for warehouse automation. With good information technology, we achieve full traceability of materials, whilst at the same time reducing operating costs through optimisation of warehouse processes. For greater transparency and more organised storage of goods, racking systems are mostly used, which are serviced with the help of forklifts or stacker cranes. Large investments, such as warehouse renovations or upgrades, must be specially adapted to the customer due to the specificity of the industries, which requires additional time and money.

With a detailed inventory of goods, warehouse equipment, monitoring of warehouse service strategy and definition of the interface system specification, the system can be adapted down to the last detail to the requirements of the warehouse operator.

Solution and Method

Because the path to an order is long, there is often not enough time for detailed testing of systems, whilst on the other hand the customer cannot assess the performance of the system until it is in use. The biggest challenge in parameterising a warehouse management system is determining internal processes and the manner and scope of using data that are necessary for material operations to be completely transparent. With daily use, possibilities for additional improvements emerge that would contribute to the optimisation of internal logistics and warehouse operations.

Good information technology and an agreement with the seller of the warehouse MFCS system enabled their company to carry out additional tests, implementations and upgrades in specially created test environments, so that testing could be carried out separately and without disruption to the production system.

Results

In the diploma thesis, with a brief presentation of the automated high-bay warehouse and the SAP (ERP) and Atlas MFCS applications, which are essential for the proper functioning of the warehouse, the background of the operation of the applications is explained, which exchange data via iDocs, execute pallet movements via created transport orders, and the way in which confirmations are sent to other applications via the interface. The diploma thesis presents the possibilities of testing and upgrading information systems, which can take place smoothly and separately from production systems with the help of various information solutions. In their company, a programme called Operator Simulator was written to carry out testing separately from production systems. In the Operator Simulator, simulation speeds could be set, as well as the wrapping time for low and high pallets, which were obtained from the real environment.

With the acceleration factor of the entire simulation, certain tests could be carried out faster than they would be in the real environment, and it was possible to manoeuvre between manual or automatic loading of pallets into the high-bay warehouse. By creating automatic or manual loads or unloads, the operator was simulated, who would load a pallet onto the input conveyor with a forklift or remove a pallet from a specific output conveyor of the automated warehouse system. In the final part of the diploma thesis, the entire process of safe and successful implementation of the new Atlas MFCS software scheme into the production environment is described, which was successfully confirmed with written IQ, OQ and PQ qualification tests.

Several key factors are described that could not be foreseen before using the new system with suppliers of automatic pallet wrappers, conveyors, lifts and software. Methods of testing for eliminating possible human errors or upgrading established processes towards new solutions in the event of illogical commands produced due to the human factor are presented.