Rotra Forwarding

Automated warehousing and
order picking system for bicycles

With the company Rotra, customer focus is not just a marketing slogan – it is lived day-to-day in all activities. This Dutch company is already handling the entire logistics processes for customers in a variety of industries. With the distribution of bicycles, another demanding and sophisticated task has been included within Rotra’s extensive range of services.

Design criteria

When a well-known bicycle manufacturing company restructured its processes, Rotra applied for the distribution of their product. Rotra was well aware, that only an innovative idea would lead to success. The solution: an automated bicycle warehouse by psb.

The solution

In this project, a wide range of proven and tested psb systems technology was applied – from the first system layout to the implementation.An ets (electric monorail system), with 65 overhead carriers, transports the bicycles between receiving and dispatch areas, and the automated high bay warehouse. Core of the solution is the compact high bay warehouse (4 aisles), which is operated by a psb runloader AS/RS mini-load crane system. Approx. 30,000 bicycles are stored on single trolleys (carriers), hanging from the front wheel. In addition to the storage function as such, fully automated sorting and order picking strategies, according to customer routing orders, are also realized in the warehouse. This is, among others, achieved by restructuring from logical storage into logical order picking areas, within the flexible utilization of storage blocks. The storage areas are organized by the psb selektron software system.