BridgeTower profile storage system

Metaltech-Piasecki is a company specializing in steel machining and the production of steel structures. At its plants in Ciechanów, Płońsk, and Czosnów, it carries out large-scale projects for customers from many countries. Dynamic growth, an increasing number of orders, and growing volumes of short-run jobs led the company to reorganize its processes related to the storage and processing of long materials such as pipes, profiles, and flats.

• Production hall layout and material flow – the company’s continuous growth and the ever-increasing number of orders required expansion of the machine park. The available space began to shrink rapidly, and transporting long materials over 6 m long became increasingly complicated,
• Corrosion – storing materials in unfavorable weather conditions (high humidity, exposure to rain and snow) caused corrosion on the metal surface. This adverse phenomenon meant that the material had to be prepared before processing, which took time and generated additional costs,
• Efficiency – in order to meet customer expectations and increase machine productivity, the client needed the material delivered to specific production stations as quickly as possible. Traditional storage on static racks or outdoors under the open sky, and transport by forklift trucks, eventually became inefficient.

After analyzing the company’s development plans and the challenges faced by Metaltech-Piasecki, a BridgeTower bridge warehouse was designed for storing pipes, bars, and profiles.

The system, consisting of 18 storage columns, a storage stacker crane, and 4 loading and unloading stations that directly supply saws and a laser tube cutting machine with raw material, makes it possible to store a total of 1,365 tons of raw material.

Particularly noteworthy is one of the loading and unloading stations operating inside the production hall. Due to the track length of as much as 100 m, it was equipped with battery power and special safety scanners, allowing it to move at speeds of up to 0.6 m/s. In addition to transporting standard materials up to 7 m long, the station, thanks to a frame for transporting oversized materials, also enables the transport of materials up to 12 m long.

Taking future development plans into account, the system will make it possible to install stations for servicing another machine in the future.

The entire solution will be integrated with an ERP and APS system thanks to our proprietary Smart WMS Advanced software.

• Elimination of long-material transport by forklift trucks in the production hall.
• Shortened delivery time of materials to production machines to an average of 4 min, and in the shortest cycles to 2 min 45 s.
• The ability to store 1,365 tons of material on an area of 280 m2.