Seng Heng Engineering Pte Ltd, manufacturer of connectors for the petrochemical and offshore industry and for the energy sector, has chosen KASTO automated storage equipment for storing its raw material.
The automatic UNITOP overhead storage system provides the Singapore company with clearly arranged and traceable storage of the up to 6-metre-long metal bars. The space required and the access times are therefore significantly less, and the work in the store is considerably reduced.
From nuts and bolts to finished components – Singapore-based Seng Heng Engineering Pte Ltd specialises in high-quality connectors for plant construction. The company focuses on the petrochemical and offshore industry and also the energy sector. Seng Heng products are incorporated, for example, in refineries, drilling rigs, power stations, FPSO vessels and submarine oil and gas pumping systems. The portfolio includes screw connectors, anchor bolts, fixing elements for pipelines and turbines, heavy-duty connectors for steel structures or submarine use, and corrosion-resistant coatings. Seng Heng can call upon 70 years of experience and now employs around 130 people. From its headquarters in Singapore, the specialist supplies numerous customers throughout the world – from Canada to Indonesia, from Europe and the Middle East to China.
Seng Heng procures the raw material for its wide product range in the form of bar stock with a length of up to 6 m. Among other things, the company processes various unalloyed and stainless steels as well as aluminium in different qualities. The bars are first put into store and subsequently formed as required using the latest machinery. “Our customers have very high expectations,” explains Operations Manager Shawn Tham. “We must be able to deliver all products anywhere in the world in the shortest possible time – and, because reliability is very important to the user, it must be possible to trace every part continuously.” Furthermore, Seng Heng not only offers a wide selection of normalised standard products, but also provides customised special solutions.
Efficient storage technology from Germany’s world market leader
In order to reliably fulfil these high demands, the connection specialist has chosen an automatic bar storage system from KASTO Maschinenbau GmbH & Co. KG for storing the raw material. The company, with its headquarters in Germany, is the world market and technology leader in sawing and storage equipment for metal bars. KASTO has also been active in South East Asia for many years; the company has had its own Sales and Service subsidiary in Singapore since October 2015. KASTO has supplied a UNITOP automatic high-bay warehouse for Seng Heng. With a height of 12 m, the overhead storage system provides space for 253 cassettes, each with a carrying capacity of up to three tonnes, in ten rows. Seng Heng stores around 80% of the required raw material in this system.
“The biggest advantage of the KASTO store is the enormous space-saving,” explains Shawn Tham. “In our previous, manually operated warehouse, we were only able to store five layers on top of one another – now it is 26.” The space required for the store has been reduced from 1,000 to 140 m². “This has enabled us to recover a large amount of valuable floor space for additional capacity,” enthuses Tham.
The characterising feature of the UNITOP bar store is the gantry crane which runs on top of the shelf block. This enables rapid access to the self-supporting cassettes. “The time to retrieve the furthest cassette is just three minutes,” says Tham, favourably impressed. “Previously it used to take us up to half an hour to get the required bar out of the store.” The automatic storage equipment also considerably reduces the amount of work required. Instead of four workers, Seng Heng now only needs two to operate the store. “This gives us more capacity for other activities,” stresses the Operations Manager.
Transparent and traceable stock holding
The computer-controlled storage system also gives a perfect overview of the stock holding at all times. Each material is stored in its own cassette and can be continuously traced by means of its heat number. “With our customers’ high quality standards, this is an important criterion,” comments Tham. The UNITOP store can also easily be operated using the FIFO (First In – First Out) principle. If several deliveries of the same material are held in the store, the oldest is retrieved first. “This prevents many bars remaining in stock too long and their quality deteriorating as a result,” explains Tham.
The Seng Heng Operations Manager is fully satisfied with the KASTO solution. “The automatic warehouse will enable us to continue to guarantee our high availability and adherence to delivery dates.” It has also made the internal working procedures considerably easier, faster and more reliable. “The investment has already paid for itself thanks to the shorter access times and the reduced working effort alone.”