Demag DH hoist unit as a pallet conveyor

Company

The Arvato Group is an internationally active service group that provides tailored supply chain services (Arvato), financial services (Riverty) and IT services (Arva-to Systems) for business customers in various industries. The Group is 100% owned by the media group Bertelsmann SE & Co. KGaA.

Whether consumer goods or mass markets, highly sensitive medicines or individ-ual luxury goods, Arvato has or develops the right solution for every product and every customer along the supply chain. Its core business traditionally includes publishing deliveries. For more than 200 publishers, VVA - Arvato Media GmbH supplies books, CDs, magazines, stationery, office supplies and games to retailers and end consumers from its three locations in Gütersloh, Verl and Gilching.

Requirement

Since 1978, Arvato has been using a pallet lift in the distribution centre at the Gütersloh site, which has a much simpler design than a conventional vertical conveyor and has probably already achieved a very long service life for this very reason. The loaded pallets are fed to the lift station via a roller conveyor. Once there, the system control gives a signal and the conveyor section under the pallet moves to the higher level together with the pallet.

Arvato thus uses a very simple and space-saving concept for vertical pallet transport. The pallet (including the roller conveyor section) is lifted by a rope hoist. For 46 years, a Demag P rope hoist has performed this lifting operation. The rope hoist is mounted on a console above the upper conveyor level.

This hoist unit now needs to be replaced due to its age – while retaining the basic design and integrating the new hoist unit into the overall control system of the conveyor system.

Solution

Peschke Industriekranservice GmbH suggested replacing the P-hoist with a DH series hoist unit. Although this hoist unit was first introduced 40 years ago, it has been continuously developed ever since. The basic concept of the hoist unit is consistent from the ground up, so the DH has established itself as the hoist of choice in the industry – not only in crane technology, but also in special plant en-gineering and even in horizontal applications, because it can be used in various installation positions. And it is currently available in a fundamentally revised version.

Peschke chose a DH 1025 hoist unit with a load capacity of 2.5 tonnes. The rope hoist lifts the pallet to the second level at a speed of 20 m/min (main lift). Exact vertical positioning is achieved with a creep lifting speed of 2.0 m/min. Both me-chanically and in terms of control technology, the new hoist unit was able to be integrated 1:1 into the conveyor system.

This solution shows that the DH hoist is also the first choice when it comes to lift-ing tasks outside of crane construction.

Special features

Following the successful conversion, the new hoist unit has proven to be an effi-cient, safe and reliable tool for vertical pallet transport. In addition, the user quickly realised that the new hoist runs more smoothly than the old one.
Based on these experiences, Arvato will also commission Peschke with the con-version of the second pallet lift, which takes the pallets from the warehouse to the picking and shipping level.

In addition to the pallet lift, more than 120 Demag geared motors are used to transport the pallets through the sorting centre from A to B. This solution has proven its worth at Arvato for decades and will be upgraded with replacement motors in the future.

Three questions to Danilo Peschke, Managing Director of Peschke Indus-triekranservice GmbH, Bielefeld

Demag: What were the initial requirements you received from the project partner?

Danilo Peschke: A 1:1 replacement of the hoist unit was required – if possible, while retaining the surrounding structure and integrating it into the control and au-tomation technology of the entire conveyor system. And of course, the new solu-tion needed to be failsafe and durable.

Demag: Was the solution obvious or did you consider alternatives?

Danilo Peschke: We examine alternatives for every project, but the solution was ultimately obvious. It needed to be a Demag hoist – after all, the existing Demag rope hoist had lasted for 46 years. The DH series is not only the first choice in crane construction, but also in applications like these. And the DH, although it has been around for a long time, is at the cutting edge in terms of safety, precision and reliability.

Demag: Have you already agreed on some follow-up projects with Arvato?

Danilo Peschke: Yes, two of them. Firstly, an identical pallet lift, which is respon-sible for transport from top to bottom, will also be converted. And then we will tackle the horizontal conveyor lines together. They are also powered by robust Demag motors – and have been for decades. We will replace them with modern Demag KB motors and, as a pleasant side effect, can also achieve efficiency gains.