Warehouse Management System: Barilla Case Study

Industry 4.0 is getting underway in worldwide culture. At the same time, we are proudly facing challenges beyond 4.0. Here the story of the partnership between Barilla and E80 Group. Every step has been taken together, with the specific aim to fully automate a plant for the future.

Warehouse Management System

What we were asked by the customer? Barilla, multinational food company Italian based and world's leading pasta maker, asked for the fully automation of the warehouse. In fact, in 2012, the company launched a major project to fully automate a warehouse in Parma, Italy, which has a capacity of about 60,000 pallets.

Why Barilla chose Elettric80 and BEMA? The answer of Alessandro Spadini, Director of the Barilla Industrial Zone in Pedrignano, Italy: “Our decision to collaborate with Elettric80 and BEMA was a logical one: they stated their willingness to develop a custom technical solution right from the beginning. We worked closely together from the design phase all the way through implementation. The result: the renewed plant is not just modern, it's unique within the industry for the way it handles certain processes”. 

Speech from the interview to Alessandro Spadini, see the video here. 

Fully Automatic: Plant and Warehouse

The automation project has produced benefits that our customer had in the following areas: 

• Efficiency, thanks to the automatic robotic pallet insert, stretch wrapping and labellers.
  A flexible robotic system allows the plant to match the loads coming from production with a specific type of pallet, wrap the loads together with the pallets, and apply two labels to each pallet.
  The double operating range and carry out automatic reel changeover, without any production downtimes, thus increasing the overall line efficiency allowing these machines to work without the support of any operator. 
• Reducing packaging, with the removal of the empty wood pallets from the production area thanks to the Robotic Palletizing System without the use of pallets
• Versatility, in terms of operations and stock management, thanks to automatic guided vehicles (AGV) equipped with lythium batteries. A large number of laser-guided vehicles is displayed, able to carry two pre-formed loads on on-board conveyors from the palletizers to the wrapping islands. 
• Effectiveness, due to the opportunity to carry out a thorough review of the warehouse management processes. 
• Flexibility, thanks to the specific software developed by Elettri80 that allowed Barilla to integrate the entire process from end-of-line packaging to warehousing.

WMS by Elettric80 and BEMA in partnership for Barilla: quotes from the customer

“Our factories will continue to be built around efficient, integrated and flexible automation in the future – not only because this allows us to overcome whatever challenges the markets throw at us – like improved reactivity and adaptation to change, and the ability to satisfy our customers’ needs – but also because efficient and flexible automation is the only way for us to manage a supply chain that is becoming more and more integrated with our production processes” — Alessandro Spadini, Director of the Barilla Industrial Zone in Pedrignano, Italy.