Dry Tower Project at SICK AG

Before the introduction of the Dry Tower, 13,000 reels were distributed and stored on 5 paternoster racks. These then had to be manually retrieved, sorted and brought to the set-up point. At the end of production, all reels had to be sorted first by paternoster and then by moisture level. The moisture-sensitive parts had to be sealed in vacuum packaging. About 4000 storage and retrieval steps were needed every day.

After moving into a larger production hall in Reute, the Dry Tower was used to simplify the processes considerably and to reduce the error rate.

Today, the reels are placed in and retrieved automatically. They are labelled with their respective feeder table designation, moved to the set-up stations and can be added to the line. The part used reels are returned to the containers. This is transferred semi-automatically to a driverless transport system, which fully automatically takes it back to the storage system. Approximately 90% of all reels required in SMD production are stored in the Dry Tower and retrieved and placed back into storage without any waiting time.

Since the Dry Tower was installed, the storage and retrieval processes have been drastically reduced and search and waiting times minimised. The high level of expansion that Sick has experienced could thus be handled without the need for additional personnel and employees can now devote more time to value-adding activities.