Swisslog SFR

Swisslog to supply modern storage technologies Swiss Federal Railways

SFR partners with Swisslog to upgrade its Railway Technology Centre

Heinrich Luethi, Swisslog.

Swiss Federal Railways (SFR) is upgrading its Railway Technology Centre to become a highperformance location for modern railway technology production and central warehouse management of raw materials, railway technology components and spare parts for infrastructure facilities.

With its project ‘Location Concentration Hägendorf‘, SBB is laying the foundation for the long-term expansion and modernisation of what is already the largest production and storage site for railway technology in Switzerland.

An expert in pallet storage systems, Swisslog, based in Switzerland, is implementing an automated high-rack storage system for SFR as part of this project. The storage system will include a picking area and an SAP EWM (Extended Warehouse Management) environment.

To this end, the automation specialist Swisslog, based in the Canton of Aargau, will supply SFR with modern high-rack storage technologies and warehouse management software, with a view to achieving full plant availability and an efficient material logistics infrastructure.

“As a Swiss company, we are proud to actively support the Swiss Federal Railways in setting up their new and advanced logistics processes,” asserted Heinrich Lüthi, Managing Director of Swisslog Switzerland.

Central Distribution Centre

The Railway Technology Centre Hägendorf delivers 150 tons of switches, rails, signals and safety systems for the Swiss railway network per year. The integrated production and logistics site in Hägendorf, located in north-western Switzerland, with its automated storage systems serves as a central backbone to ensure security and efficiency of supply of materials needed for repairs, maintenance and expansion projects of the SFR railway infrastructure.

The constant availability of the logistics infrastructure is crucial for these processes. “We can guarantee this availability for all of our intralogistics components with close to one hundred percent,” emphasized Lüthi.

To this end, the intralogistics company has optimised all layouts in such a way that well-tried standard components are used in the mechanics and control systems and complex elements are replaced by simpler ones. Safety is another top priority. As part of Swisslog’s fire safety measures, the logistics are encapsulated and inerted with nitrogen.

Optimised layouts with SAP EWM

The high-rack storage system planned by Swisslog will feature around 13,800 pallet spaces distributed over three aisles and will be operated with the help of three Vectura storage and retrieval machines. The cassette storage system for lengthy materials is single aisle and designed for 1,570 storage locations.

Swisslog not only implements the SAP EWM system in the new, automated storage areas and picking zones, but will also connect existing systems, such as manually operated internal and external storage facilities, to the software platform. Go-live is scheduled for the summer of 2023.