ZF Foton

In 2016, ZF and Foton opened a joint transmission plant in China, seeing excellent market potential in automated commercial vehicles. In their 2nd joint venture and partnership with SSI Schaefer, ZF Foton wanted to turn their factory into an automated warehouse.

ZF Foton Plant in Jiaxing

Joint venture: integrated automation warehouse for vehicle production in china

According to the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), commercial vehicle sales in China jumped 18.7% to an all-time record of 5.1 million units in 2020 while sales worldwide tanked 15.7%. To cater to the increased demands and needs, ZF and Foton has embarked on a second joint venture seeking to increase the production of transmissions for light commercial vehicles in Jiaxing for the Chinese market.

Integration of Warehouse Technology for a Combined Semi and Fully Automated Solution
Occupying over 250,000m², the plant is developed under a two-phase program at the cost of 5 billion yuan (~641 million Euros). The warehouse is a well thought out concept that combines a semi and fully automated logistics process. Due to the variety of parts that ZF Foton carries, two different racking systems are required to handle the storage capacity and density. The Very Narrow Aisle (VNA) for the storage of pallets and bulky items, and the SSI Miniload for small parts components. This unique configuration allows for ZF Foton to have a guaranteed space performance ratio and increased picking efficiency.

Maximizing Storage Density in the Warehouse
To effectively maximize space in the warehouse, ZF Foton has partnered with SSI SCHAEFER to expand the storage density vertically by using customizable punching uprights. With customizable punching uprights, additional storage space is easily created as it allows for products in different sizes to be stored together.

Challenges That Comes with Building an Ultra-Dense Facility
One of ZF Foton's requirements when conceptualizing their new warehouse is having an ultra-dense facility that allows for storage of different part sizes. With this consideration, SSI SCHAEFER proposed two different types of pallet racking systems to handle the storage capacity and density. With a combination of a semi and fully automated solution, ZF Foton can make efficient use of available space and improve picking efficiency.  

Customer Satisfaction, Service and Support

“In this project, the cooperation with SSI SCHAEFER is very smooth and effective. In the course of more than two years of use, this set of automation system has almost no failures, which provides a strong guarantee for the efficient operation of the logistics department”

Mr Huang Rui
Logistics Manager ZF Foton
pallet racking,racking,double deep pallet racking,storage racks,warehouse
Mr Huang Rui
Logistics Manager ZF Foton

Catering to the growing demand of commercial vehicles

In continuation to their first joint venture, ZF and Foton decided to open a joint transmission plant in China, seeing excellent market potential in automated commercial vehicles. In partnership with SSI SCHAEFER, ZF Foton's goal was to turn their factory into an automated warehouse. With this in mind and a combination of a semi-automated and automated solution with correct materials, ZF Foton was able to transform their warehouse into an ultra-dense facility maximizing storage density and improving production efficiency.

Project Goals:

• To turn a factory into an automated warehouse to store different sizes of components and respond to the production area goods-out request.
• To provide storage for 65,000 SKUs using the 7,800m² space in the 15,900m² warehouse
• To improve the company’s production efficiency. Once the production line triggers a demand, the warehouse response must be able to respond in the shortest time to provide the production line with the requisite spare parts needed for production

SSI SCHAEFER automates warehouse for ZF Friedrichshafen

ZF awarded SSI SCHAEFER the contract to automate a new area of their warehouse in Jiaxing, Zhejiang province, China.

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