Mahle (D)

The automotive industry supplier MAHLE uses a total of 4,500 Wanzl floor rollers at its sites across Europe. The MAHLE Behr thermal management plant in the Bavarian town of Neustadt is home to 1,500 of them. The plant, which has a manufacturing area of almost 10,000 m² and 19 production lines, produces car air conditioning systems for customers such as Audi, BMW, Land Rover, Porsche and Volvo. The floor rollers are used as transporters, order picking trolleys and mobile storage in three-shift operations around the clock. The functions they perform support the plant's internal "Logistics 2020" improvement project. The objective of "Logistics 2020" is to introduce the principles of lean production throughout the plant.

The new lean assembly concept is known as FLOWline and the lean logistics system is referred to as flat storage. "The result will be a lean enterprise: a slimline organisation with a process-based material flow which is focused on our customers' requirements," says Hermann Horneber, head of logistics in Neustadt. The company aims to complete the project by 2018.

The "Logistics 2020" project is based on the four cornerstones of concepts for storage, containers, transport and standardised working methods. The WBR floor trolleys play an important role in this respect. When parts are delivered from suppliers, the robust floor rollers, which have a wire mesh base, are used for transporting and picking the parts and also function as a mobile storage facility in the truck loading area. 

At MAHLE Behr the intralogistics system is designed to meet the specific needs of the production department, with vehicle manufacturers and their orders setting the pace for the entire cycle. The required components arrive on time in the correct quantity and sequence.