Overview

Dematic GmbH & Co. KG is one of the world's leading suppliers of logistics automation. Dematic's product and services portfolio is designed for and supplied to companies of all sizes in the wholesale and retail trades - including mail-order, the food and beverage industry, the chemical and pharmaceuticals industries, and manufacturing industry. A key piece of software used by Dematic is Demo3D which is supplied by Autologic Systems Ltd.

With Demo3D you can build dynamic material handling models to develop equipment layouts, visualize product flows, and understand overall system operation. Demo3D's unique approach also allows you to link these models directly to external control systems to provide an offline test bed for commissioning. In this article Neil Chamberlain, Senior Controls Design Engineer at Dematic talks to us about how one particular client

Problem and Solution

Dematic’s client was using existing automation control software that only had two years remaining in its product life cycle and so, before it became obsolete, Dematic were asked to assist the client in upgrading their systems. The UK-based company runs a chilled warehouse with an extremely busy production line and so it was imperative that the down time was kept to a minimum and testing was done off site.

Due to the nature of the brief, Demo3D was the ideal solution as it provides extensive modelling facilities, meaning any experimentation and testing can be done virtually.

The Outcome

Neil Chamberlain comments: “We had a very short commissioning time and so with Demo3D we were able to set up a replica model of the client’s warehouse and test the actual physical movement of pallets. After building the model, two days were spent testing the new software. After this, we were literally able to plug the software in on site and the client was up and running. We cut commissioning time by around 50% and kept the down time for the client to an absolute minimum.

“Also, for any unforeseen problems that did arise in the first few days of operation, we were able to revert to the modelling capability of Demo3D to examine what went wrong and retro test any changes before these were implemented on site.

“As well as significantly reducing commissioning times and problem solving, the software is also an excellent training tool for new and existing users as they are able to learn offline and/or test any new ideas or products.”

Dematic have now catalogued their products in Demo3D which means future installations can benefit from even quicker commissioning times.