Roj

Roj: new logistics, greater opportunities

About it

Roj founded in 1965 in Biella by Remo Roj and Sergio Vella, and today part of the Belgian Van De Wiele Group, operates in the business to business field for the textile-machinery and electronic sectors, and expects to close the year 2014 with a turnover around 46 million euros and an average workforce of 230 employees.

Objectives

The need for a greater operative and productive flexibility pushed the company to launch a reorganization plan of its logistic processes, with the aim of having more physical space for the purpose of acquiring new business and above all of consolidating new operative logics, which are having a positive impact also on other aspects other than logistics. It is very important, affirms Franco Oliaro, Roj managing director, to have a flexible production system able to manage both traditional and new productions to meet any requirements of our customers. Actually, one of the main aims of this project is to attract new customers, offering a modern and efficient mechanical assembly department.

The implemented solutions

The solution concerned the installation at Roj of an automated warehouse similar to the one that, at Van De Wiele, manages small materials: a traditional shelving miniload for storing plastic drawers moved by a stacker crane. Equipped with outlets distributed throughout the warehouse front where the operator carries out picking operations via RF. Incas has guided ROJ throughout the different project steps, playing a fundamental role at a level of flow management. It was decided to develop a system able to manage both boxes and drawers containing semi-finished and finished products. Each bay has been equipped with mobile drawers manually handled by the operator, who pulls out the material deposited by the stacker crane and pushes it back into the warehouse. A simple, but effective operation which ensures operators’ safety by means of mechanical stops that do not affect system ergonomics, and the installation of optic barriers, which are activated to stop the machine when the stacker crane is running.
Furthermore, the Roj ERP has been integrated with Incas WMS Easystor and this allowed to map all products and to logistically reorganize the whole of the processes. This change in perspective has been the starting point for the definition of important optimizations in terms of process and management of the material flow.

Conclusions

Since in the very first operation weeks (l kick off took place at the beginning of September, editor’s note) a drastic reduction in internal movements has been observed” says Franco Oliaro “in addition to the advantages in terms of operational and processing spaces which are opening up new optimization opportunities.

INSIGHTS