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Toyota Material Handling and GS Yuasa - Growing Together
Toyota’s RadioShuttle technology works with automated reach trucks to deliver a host of benefits for battery maker GS Yuasa at its new warehouse unit in Swindon.
About GS Yuasa
With a state-of-the-art manufacturing facility situated in the Welsh town of Ebbw Vale and five distribution hubs strategically located in Milan, Lyon, Madrid, Dusseldorf and Swindon, GS Yuasa Battery Europe Ltd (Yuasa) is Europe’s leading manufacturer and supplier of automotive and industrial batteries and accessories.
Yuasa established its UK base in Swindon in 1981. Originally the company operated two stand-alone warehouse units, using one of the buildings for the storage of industrial batteries while the other housed all the products that made up the automotive range. The twin stores were some five miles apart.
With Yuasa’s UK sales to both the industrial and automotive sectors constantly growing, it became increasingly apparent that the existing facilities no longer offered the capacity or order throughput speed that Yuasa’s market dominance demanded.
Futureproofing Operations
Following a comprehensive review of its present needs and desire to futureproof the business, the decision was taken to merge the original warehouses into one unit that would allow the automotive and industrial battery ranges to be stored, picked, packed and dispatched under one roof.
With good quality new build warehouse property as rare in Wiltshire as it is throughout the rest of the UK, Yuasa decided that the best way forward was to commission the construction of a brand-new building designed to its own specification and set of criteria. An ideal site was found, and the first spade went into the ground in 2022.
The facility has a footprint of some 180,000 sq ft but even with a warehouse of that size, careful planning is still essential to best utilize all the available space.
Automation Supports Growth
After reviewing various scenarios, Yuasa awarded Toyota Material Handling UK Ltd the contract to design an intralogistics scheme that would achieve the battery storage capacity, throughput speed and picking accuracy that they were looking for. Toyota presented Yuasa with a bulk store and order picking scheme that featured high density pallet racking served by the company’s RadioShuttle pallet transfer technology and automated reach trucks.
The combination of RadioShuttles and automated reach trucks has transformed the pallet put-away and retrieval operation from a labour intensive and therefore costly task, into an entirely people-free, rapid, safe, accurate and highly cost-efficient process.
The exceptionally space-efficient racking system designed by Toyota’s automated project division was installed by a team of highly skilled engineers and provides sufficient space for a staggering 900,000 batteries to be stored.
The efficiencies generated by the Toyota RadioShuttle and the automated reach trucks mean that 50,000 batteries – enough to fill between 15 and 20 lorry loads - can be picked, packed and dispatched from the site every day.
“We are storing more batteries than we have ever stored. The level of capacity Toyota has achieved means we now have 100 percent stock availability, so our customer service offering is even better than it ever has been – and it wasn’t exactly shoddy before,” says Danny Sturgeon, Yuasa’s Production & Automation Manager.
Delivering Benefits
The use of high-density racking, automated reach trucks and RadioShuttles have delivered a host of benefits for Yuasa as Danny Sturgeon explains: “The new storage solution has not only maximized our capacity it has also provided a far more straightforward picking process. Thanks to the fact that all picking is now done within one zone at ground level our warehouse staff no longer have to walk long distances between pick locations. The order picking function has also been made safer because the ‘picking tunnel’ is a pedestrian only area and cannot be accessed by lift trucks.”
He continues: “And, replacing traditional manually operated forklifts with automated reach trucks, which can work without breaks or stoppages, has freed up lift truck operator personnel who we have reallocated to other duties within the business.
“The introduction of automated reach trucks has also completely eradicated accidental stock damage during the pallet put-away and retrieval process,” Danny adds.