Food & Beverage Applications

Consumer Goods

Paper products, including toilet paper, paper towels and fine printing paper has all been delivered via Retrotech software and equipment. Other categories include greeting cards and automotive tires.

	Schering ASRS Software - This case study represents an AS/RS multi-project, multi-year effort resulting in a complete facility modernization and resolving a variety of business issues, including performance, reliability, and space.
	ACTIV Distribution Center - ACTIV System – ACTIV acts as a storage buffer for the manufactured product. Full pallet unit loads are buffered and continually flow through to staging lanes at the dock end of the system.
	IBM ASRS - Efficiency of the Eaton-Kenway mini-load operation had deteriorated due to equipment obsolescence and limited OEM support. Notably, the stackers had obsolete horizontal and vertical positioning systems, horizontal DC drives and motors. between on-board controls and the off-board computer.
	Inter Forum Publishing - Inter Forum, a division of Vivendi Universal, is the number-two company in book distribution within Europe. This mega-distribution center was created when five smaller distribution centers were combined.
	Georgia Pacific - Georgia-Pacific’s existing system material handled storage of finished paper products for the corporation, and served as a buffer between production and shipping. Retrieved loads were placed by a onto stacker cranes.

Food and Beverage

Food and Beverage is Retrotech's largest application area due primarily to the nature of turns in food. High-turn snack food products, as well as staple bread products including rolls, have been delivered through Retrotech Woodson and ACTIV systems. Sauces and other processed food products such as salsa are moved by the 1000s of cases daily by Retrotech equipment and software. Fluid milk, processed dairy, ice cream, frozen foods and beer & soft drinks have all been delivered via Retrotech products distribution systems software or equipment. Meat products from hamburger, steaks and roasts to processed pork products have been delivered to trucks either as mixed product order fulfillment or straight loads. Blast Freezing operations using ACTIV System flow through is also in the application offering. Food and beverage includes non-refrigerated shipments of cereal, with one company producing and shipping nearly 70% of its North American supply through an ACTIV system.

	Beer & Beverage - Large Volume Beverage Distribution Center Calanda Haldengut Brauerein is a major distributor of beverages in Switzerland. Their Calanda Bräu Distribution Center was a new build facility designed to include maximum storage in a limited footprint. This application showcases the modularity and flexibility of ACTIV’s continuous flow technology.
	bo*frost Freezer - The ACTIV System in this facility operates 16 hours/day. It is divided into three storage areas — a full pallet cold store (VP), an order picking store (AP), and an order picked/mixed pallet store (MP).
	Cargill Meat Solutions - Cargill Meat Solutions Inc., specializes in beef processing for the con-sumer market and provides various grades of boxed beef products to wholesale/retail distributors and high-volume users.
	Cargill Meat Solutions - The warehouse operations use an elaborate series of box and unit load conveyors to move Vintage 5-aisle Demag unit load AS/RS had proprietary control system with limited support capabilities and no flexibility. Drive systems were obsolete and system performance needed to be improved.
	Frito Lay - ACTIV System—Staging takes place within the ACTIV footprint. Orders are arranged in reverse trailer order in a “ staging slot.” For this application, the staging slots consist of three staging lanes arranged vertically.
	Kraft Foods Buffer - This ACTIV application is installed in a new warehouse facility. With 25,000+ positions, it is the world’s largest ACTIV System. A corporate Warehouse Management System (WMS) manages the entire operating warehouse environment.
	Li Destri Distribution Warehouse - LiDestri Foods of Fairport, NY manufactures LiDestri and Francesco Rinaldi spaghetti sauces, Newman’ s Own salsa and pasta sauces, as well as a number of major national and store branded products.
	Lutosa Access System - Van den Broeke-Lutosa - one of Europe’s leading food processors and Belgium’s largest potato processor - delivers over 300,000 tons of product annually.
	Monfort ASRS - Monfort Beef, a division of ConAgra, specializes in the processing of meat. This facility provides an assortment of grades of boxed beef for the consumer market, and ships it to wholesale, retail distributors, and high-volume end users.
	Unifrost Access System - This design, when combined with a multi-deep lane capability, gives this facility high density with tremendous flexibility for throughput and future growth. This facility allows Unifrost/Dujardin to control shipping and eliminates a large outside storage and logistics cost.
	Wendts - The bottom two levels of the AS/RS are pick mezzanines with gravity pick slots that feed facings that are adjacent to dairy chains. Here the pickers can slide a case or a stack onto the adjacent chain with minimal effort.

Grocery

ASRS for dry goods and refrigerated foods are reliably delivered everyday from Retrotech software & control systems and integrated equipment. Retrotech's history has included grocery ASRS distribution from 1988 to date.

ICA Cross Docking - Partihandel, is a huge player in grocery industry – a division of Ahold, with full service stores as well as convenience style shops. To support the servicing of stores with high frequency, ICA looks for manufacturers to deliver store orders for a region in layer quantities, on pallets, to their automated cross docking facility, where many manufacturers “to store” order pallets are merged onto ICA trucks.

Home and Personal Care

ACTIV systems have organized and delivered these home laundry products, both liquid and powder, to waiting trucks in as many as (4) sites across North America. Laundry products for one major manufacturer are delivered almost exclusively via multiple ACTIV Systems that have been expanded to meet the plant's growing capabilities. Staging capabilities for consumer goods has accelerated dock turns at a number of U.S. facilities. Software from Retrotech manages over 1000 HABA skin and beauty products in a manufacturing ASRS DC.

	Procter ACTIV System - Storage Buffer for Full-Pallet Unit Loads - The manufacturing facility identified in this case study shows a two-module system. The levels are 3 and 4 high, respectively, with the 3-level high system being installed in an existing building.
	Schering ASRS Software - This case study represents an AS/RS multi-project, multi-year effort resulting in a complete facility modernization and resolving a variety of business issues, including performance, reliability, and space.