The new KARL STORZ logistics centre sets standards

Tuttlingen, 07/12/13 With guests from politics and industry, KARL STORZ celebrated the opening of the 25,000 m² logistics center that has been built within 15 months at the Take Off industrial park in Neuhausen ob Eck (Tuttlingen county).

The new building consists of a modern, automated high-bay warehouse with currently 83,000 bin locations and a generous office wing. In the future, some 330 employees who now work at the existing logistics center in Tuttlingen will move to the new building.

In her opening speech, Dr. h. c. mult. Sybill Storz emphasized that the company has not merely added a new building with more space and storage area, but that all logistical processes have been reviewed and adapted as needed in the process of building the new center. Another focus area was the close coordination between production, logistics, and shipping activities as well as optimized interfaces. “Our company has a tradition of taking the entrepreneurial responsibility and the associated risk to consistently prepare for the future,” commented Dr. Sybill Storz. She pointed out that this new investment has become necessary because the existing logistics center that opened in 1999 became too small as a result of the company’s healthy and sustainable growth. With the new building, the KARL STORZ management has once again confirmed its commitment to Tuttlingen county.

Karl-Christian Storz emphasized in his speech that while the building decisively strengthens the company’s logistics performance, the employed technology is primarily designed to serve the staff and make their work easier and more efficient.

In the subsequent tour of the new logistics center, guests were introduced to the new high-bay warehouse with shuttle system, which completely reverses the conventional logistics concept. The old concept of employees going to the goods’ storage locations is now obsolete. In the future, the goods will be taken to the employee’s workplace and then to the shipping area by intelligent conveyor technology. This new process and the introduction of shift work will significantly increase throughput and the speed with which products can be sent to customers worldwide. The company management emphasized that the partially automated process steps are intended to support the staff and that the goal is not to eliminate staff experience and know-how but rather to optimally combine automation and staff expertise.

The farsightedness of the investment is underscored by the modular nature of the warehouse system: the initial warehouse capacity can, in successive steps, grow with the family company to reach up to twice its current volume.